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Article: Bull Moose Party
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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BULL MOOSE PARTY
BULL MOOSE PARTY,
the nickname given by newspapers to the Progressive Party, founded in June 1912 by progressive Republicans who bolted the GOP convention to protest the regular party's "standpatism" and the usurpation of progressive presidential electors by incumbent William Howard Taft. The "Bull Moose" tag was an obvious reference to Theodore Roosevelt, the party's leader and presidential candidate, who sometimes identified himself with the male gender of the North American ruminant. When shot by a would-be assassin only weeks before the 1912 election, Roosevelt insisted on immediately filling a speaking engagement, saying "it takes more than that to kill a bull ...