By contrast with the numerous membership problems confronting the Republican party in Congress, the Democrats have had relatively little difficulty, whether because of a more harmonious party, a higher sense of party loyalty, a stricter party discipline, a more tolerant attitude toward party rebels, or for whatever reason. The first case on record involved David Davis, that sturdy independent from Illinois, who was probably a member at one time or another of every political party that operated during his lifetime. After his election to the Senate in 1877, he was pointed out as the only Senator who did not attend either party caucus, and it was said that he “passed a rather lonesome hour on the floor of the Senate, in company with the door-keepers and pages, while the other Senators were talking politics to each other in well-guarded rooms.” The Democrats nevertheless considered Davis as one of their own number, or at any rate as one worth cultivating; and when in control of the Senate in 1881, they presented a committee slate with Davis as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The progressive movement developed for the campaign of 1924 into La Follette's Progressive party operating as a third party, with many of the progressive Republicans giving it active support and thereby bolting the Republican nominee, President Coolidge; and immediately following the election, won easily by the Republican party, the Republican leaders began to suggest punishing the bolters by treating them, in respect to committee assignments, as members of a third party and no longer as Republicans, and thus depriving them of their seniority on committees, a privilege which had put many of them in good positions. Senator Watson (Indiana), who became chairman of the Republican Committee on Committees in the Senate, indicated that “Senator La Follette and all those who read themselves out of the party” would lose their present committee places in the new (69th) Congress and would be given places according to their new party strength; Senator Moses (New Hampshire), slated for president pro tem. of the Senate, said: “Senator La Follette has gone out of the Republican party and has gone voluntarily. He has headed the national ticket of a new party which he undoubtedly hopes to perpetuate.

The general problem of party membership in the United States was examined to some extent in an earlier article in this Review, and out of that study certain implications could be noted with respect to the nature and operation of our two-party system. It was assumed, to begin with, that it is important in any party system “to bring together those persons, and only those persons, who adhere to the respective party principles,” and particularly important to do that in a two-party system, “where the principles and issues are presumably sharply denned and clearly distinguishable.” The extended survey of the trends in legislation and in party practice led to the conclusion that there is still need for “some better definition or understanding of what is meant by a loyal Republican and a loyal Democrat,” that the lack of such definition is at least partially responsible for the loose and irresponsible nature of the party organizations, for the mass of glittering generalities in party platforms, and for the failure to offer the voter anything like clear alternative programs. “Somehow or other, it should be possible to have a party system which would make it clear whether Wendell Willkie or Senator Nye is the better Republican, whether Franklin D. Roosevelt or Senator Wheeler is the better Democrat.”