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| Source:Brandon Tube- 1940 Republican Party presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. |
"Wendell Willkie is speaking in this 1940 spot against Roosevelt as the Republican nomination."
From Brandon Tube
Before I saw this 1940 video of Wendell Willkie, I had him down as a Classical Liberal or what some people might call a Conservative today. Outside of America, at least in the rest of the developed world, Liberals are center-right, Social Democrats are center-left. But in America, Liberals are considered center-left and the mainstream media in this country has almost no use for labels like social democrat or even democratic socialist, even with Bernie Sanders in Congress.
But after seeing this video, I think Wendell Willkie, at least based on the positions that he was taking, sounds like a Theodore Roosevelt Progressive Republican. Still to the right of Franklin Roosevelt and other Progressive Democrats of the 1930s and 40s and to the left of the Conservative Republicans, but someone who would put more limits on what the Federal Government should.
A Roosevelt Republican would be in favor of the safety net for people who truly need it. But not for a universal, cradle to grave welfare state, that would replace the private employment benefits system that so many American workers rely on. And would want that safety net there not just to assist people in need financially, but to help them back on their feet through education and work requirements, and time limits.
