In the years before professional image-building, few political groups managed to acquire a more enviable image than did the Republican insurgents of the Taft period. The Congressional insurgents, who first caught the country’s attention with the fight against the Payne-Aidrich tariff in the Senate and against the dictatorial rule of Speaker Joseph Cannon in the House, compensated for their failure to win control of their party by winning extravagant praise from contemporary journalists. They have had scarcely less appeal for historians. Thomas Dreier entitled his 1910 study of the rebellious Republicans, Heroes of Insurgency, and later writers have followed his spirit, and very nearly his terminology. In 1940, Kenneth W. Hechler provided a highly favorable portrait in Insurgency, and Russel Nye’s Midwestern Progressive Politics (1951) offered a sympathetic portrayal in the 1950s. Only in the most recent study, James L. Holt’s Congressional Insurgents and the Party System (1967), is there any critical discussion of the limitations of the insurgents’ ideas and political strategies.