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This Puck cartoon was published just a few weeks before the Republican National Convention met in Chicago. Secretary of War William Howard Taft had already, as of the end of May, accumulated enough delegates to win the GOP presidential nomination on the first ballot by a landslide. Here, the Republican Elephant embraces a gleeful Taft in a gesture of polite acceptance and congratulation. However, the cartoon’s clear message is that the party is saddened that its preferred candidate, President Theodore Roosevelt, was keeping a pledge, made shortly after winning the 1904 election, not to seek a third term. Into early 1908, many Republicans hoped, and newspapers speculated, that he would change his mind and enter the race. |
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