Editing Joseph Gurney Cannon (section)

==== 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.]]