Editing Joseph Gurney Cannon (section)

=== William Howard Taft presidency ===

==== 1908 elections ====
As early as 1905, Cannon had expressed confidence that he was a contender for the 1908 presidential nomination.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} Ultimately, Roosevelt was able to maneuver the delegates at the [[1908 Republican National Convention]] in support of [[William Howard Taft]], his Secretary of War. Cannon received 51 of the 54 Illinois delegates and a handful from other states, finishing a distant fourth. Taft was nominated easily on the first ballot. Nevertheless, Cannon was influential at the convention, engineering the party platform and the nomination of conservative [[James S. Sherman]] of New York, one of his strongest House allies, for vice president.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}}

During the 1908 campaign, Cannon came under heavy fire from the press, which denounced him as a tyrant and obstacle to every piece of progressive legislation introduced in the prior thirty years. One cartoon depicted him as the "Unrepentant Defendant" in the court trial of "Predatory Wealth" for its victimization of "The Common People."{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} For his part, Cannon attributed the newspaper opposition to his refusal to support Roosevelt's proposal to permit the duty-free importation of newsprint and wood pulp, as well as his very first House bill which passed the cost of magazine and newspaper subscriptions to publishers.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}}

The Democratic Party seized on the issue of House reform, stating in their party platform, "The House of Representatives, as controlled in recent years by the Republican party, has ceased to be a deliberative and legislative body, responsive to the will of a majority of its members, but has come under the absolute domination of the Speaker, who has entire control of its deliberations and powers of legislation. ... Legislative government becomes a failure when one member, in the person of the Speaker, is more powerful than the entire body."{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} [[William Jennings Bryan]], the Democratic nominee for president, and labor leader [[Samuel Gompers]] each visited Illinois to campaign against Cannon's re-election. Even some Republicans, including Nebraska representative [[George W. Norris]], campaigned against "Cannonism." Taft himself privately admitted, "the great weight I have to carry in this campaign is Cannonism."{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} Nevertheless, Taft and the Republicans won an easy victory in the fall elections; Norris, who had distinguished himself as an intra-party rival to Cannon's power, won re-election by only 22 votes.
[[File:Senator George W. Norris.jpg|left|thumb|288x288px|Representative [[George W. Norris]] of [[Nebraska]] led the "Insurgents," a loose group of [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] House Republicans opposed to Cannon's leadership.]]

==== 1910 rules revolt ====
When the [[61st United States Congress|61st Congress]] met in March 1909, Roosevelt and Taft agreed that Cannon could not be removed as Speaker. The large Republican majority carried him to another term in office, though a core of twelve "Insurgent" members refused to vote for him. However, the new Democratic floor leader, [[Champ Clark]], forced a roll-call vote on the usually uncontested vote to adopt the rules of the previous Congress. An amendment was ultimately adopted, with Democratic and Insurgent votes, to revise certain rules, including the introduction of a [[unanimous consent]] calendar for those bills which were not contested.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} In retaliation, Cannon removed three Insurgents from committee chairs and moved others to less significant committees. To the press, Cannon said, "[[Judas Iscariot|Judas]] was an insurgent and sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. I have no doubt he would have been applauded by the newspapers in Jerusalem had there been any in that day."{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}}

As Cannon's power continued to expand, his relationship with Taft continued to decline. Taft stayed out of House business, neither aiding nor opposing Cannon, but he privately noted that it was his wish to have Cannon removed. Cannon likewise grew critical of Taft, particularly after his elevation of [[Edward Douglass White]], a Catholic Democrat, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} A growing movement within the Republican Party came to support Cannon's removal as Speaker, for pragmatic reasons; [[Henry Cabot Lodge]] advised Roosevelt that the Republicans would lose the House if Cannon remained, Taft expressed that such removal would "accord... with the welfare of the Republican party," and various Republican newspapers suggested his resignation as Speaker or even from Congress.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} In the face of growing opposition, Cannon grew defiant. He said, "I will say positively that I will not retire from Congress until my constituents fail to give me a majority." In one public meeting, he pulled open his coat and shouted, "Behold Mr. Cannon, the [[Beelzebub]] of Congress! Gaze on this noble manly form{{Em dash}}me, Beelzebub! Me, the Czar!"{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}} Of the Insurgents, he remarked that they were "dishonest and disgruntled"; he accused them of introducing demagogic bills which would never be approved, then telling the "ignorant element" of their constituents that Cannon had personally stopped the bill, "thus creating the belief that the Speaker was a 'Czar' and controlled by the 'interests.'"{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=96–111}}

On March 16, 1910, Cannon's power began to crack when the House voted against his ruling on a matter of procedure. [[Edgar D. Crumpacker|Edgar Crumpacker]], chair of the Committee on the Census, introduced a joint resolution regarding the upcoming census. Though the resolution was not in the order of business, Crumpacker argued that the matter was constitutionally privileged, as the census was mandated by the Constitution, and the Constitution overrode any House rule. Cannon ruled in favor of the argument, but the House majority voted not to sustain his ruling. It was rare for the House to reject a Speaker's ruling, and Cannon bitterly remarked that his "face [had been] rubbed in the sand."{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=112–122}} Sensing an opening, George Norris took the opportunity. The next day, Norris introduced a prepared resolution to create a new Rules Committee with fifteen members, all elected by the House. The Speaker, who had been the chair of the Rules Committee ''ex officio'' since 1880, would be barred from membership, thus placing the Committee (and ostensibly the House) above the Speaker's authority, with the power to revise that authority. Like Crumpacker, Norris claimed his resolution was constitutionally privileged under Article I, Section 5: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings..." and therefore should be heard immediately by the whole House.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=112–122}} Having used Cannon's own ruling against him, Norris placed the Speaker in a double-bind. Cannon immediately denounced the resolution as "anarchy under the [[color of law]],"{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=112–122}} but hurriedly withdrew to whip votes against it. His lieutenants delayed through dilatory tactics while loyal members returned to the Capitol, but after a weekend recess, Cannon proved unable to rally support to his side. On March 19, Cannon ruled Norris's resolution out of order, citing a long list of precedential rulings by prior Speakers, but the House again overruled him on appeal, by a vote of 182 to 163. The House immediately voted on the resolution itself, and it passed with 42 Republican and all 149 Democratic votes by the margin of 191 to 156. Cannon did maintain his position as Speaker by entertaining an immediate [[Motion to vacate the chair|motion to vacate]], which he won handily since the Republican majority would not risk a Democratic speaker replacing him. However, his iron rule of the House was broken.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=112–122}}

The new Rules Committee, chaired by [[John Dalzell]], passed a flurry of reforms, including a discharge rule empowering a majority to remove bills from committee and a "Calendar Wednesday," allowing committees to present bills otherwise blocked from consideration by the Speaker's scheduling. Despite the dramatic reduction in Cannon's powers, Republican prospects for the upcoming election did not improve. The Democrats won control of the House in the [[1910 United States House of Representatives elections|1910 midterm elections]] for the first time since 1894; Cannon himself struggled for his re-election.{{Sfn|Mooney|1964|pp=112–122}}
[[File:Time Magazine - first cover.jpg|thumb|The inaugural cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine featured Cannon on his last day in office, March 3, 1923.]]