How the New Deal was passed: Hint: There were a hell of a lot

The American Liberty League was a U.S. organization formed in 1934 by conservative Democrats such as Al Smith (the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee), Jouett Shouse (former high party official and U.S. Representative), John W. Davis (the 1924 Democratic presidential nominee), and John Jacob Raskob (former Democratic National Chairman and the foremost opponent of Prohibition), Dean Acheson (future Secretary of State under Harry Truman), along with many industrialists, notably Prescott Bush and members of the Du Pont family.

The League stated that it would work to "defend and uphold the Constitution" and to "foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property." In its opinion, the Roosevelt Administration was leading the U.S. toward fascism, bankruptcy and dictatorship. The League spent between $500,000 and $1.5 million in promotional campaigns; its funding came mostly from the Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, General Foods, Standard Oil, Birdseye, Colgate, Heinz Foods, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. It reached over 125,000 members and supported the Republicans in 1936.

In the year of its founding, 1934, the League was allegedly involved in the Business Plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The plot is detailed in congressional testimony by Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler. According to Butler's testimony, the League was founded intentionally as a para-military coup vehicle, an 'American version' of the 1930s French Croix de Feu. Butler said that he was approached to lead a group of 500,000 veterans to take over the functions of government. The final McCormack-Dickstein Committee report agreed with Butler's allegations on the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed.(Spivak, Seldes, Archer)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Liberty_League

Much of the eventual opposition to Roosevelt's leadership came from members of his own party. Indeed, it was in the Washington office of Jouette Shouse, the powerful Democratic leader who helped to rebuild the Democratic party during Hoover's Presidency, that the creation of the Liberty League was first announced to the press in August 1934. Shouse with John J. Raskob, chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1928, and other conservative Democrats feared that the Roosevelt administration was veering too far to the left. Alfred E. Smith and John W. Davis, two former Democratic Presidential candidates, served as directors of the league along with three Republicans. The league was organized ostensibly as a nonpartisan venture to gather facts. Under that guise it even received the blessing of Roosevelt. Many Republicans, however, viewed the Liberty League as a front organization for their party. Neasweek saw the the issue clearly: "The Tories," it reported, "have come out of ambush." Soon Democratic leaders within the administration regarded the league as nothing but an organized endeavor to destroy the appeal of their party. Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, professed to be delighted. The United States would have at last, he commented, two political parties divided on real issues. Harry Hopkins wrote cynically: "The League may be composed of right-thinking people but they are so far Right that no one will ever find them." By the close of 1934 the battle lines in national politics were clearly drawn.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00224642/di982286/98p0174t/0.

Destroying the Third-Party Threat

Beyond adopting leftist rhetoric and offering progressive policies in exchange for support from radical and economically depressed constituencies, President Roosevelt also sought to recruit the actual leaders of protest groups by convincing them that they were part of his coalition. He gave those who held state and local public office access to federal patronage, particularly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York, where strong statewide third parties existed. Electorally powerful non-Democrats whom Roosevelt supported included Minnesota governor Floyd Olson (Farmer-Labor Party), New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia (American Labor Party), and Nebraska senator George Norris (Independent), as well as Wisconsin governor Philip La Follette and his brother, Senator Robert La Follette Jr. (both Progressive Party).

This strategy had an impact. In 1937, Philip La Follette’s executive secretary told Daniel Hoan, the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, that a national third party never would be launched while Roosevelt was “in the saddle,” because Roosevelt had “put so many outstanding liberals on his payroll . . . any third party movement would lack sufficient leadership.” The president told leftist leaders that he was on their side and that his ultimate goal was to transform the Democratic Party into an ideologically coherent progressive party in which they could hope to play a leading role. A few times he even implied that, to secure ideological realignment, he personally might go the third-party route, following in the footsteps of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt.

Franklin Roosevelt ran his 1936 presidential campaign as a progressive coalition, not as a Democratic Party activity. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has described Roosevelt’s tactics as follows:

As the campaign developed, the Democratic party seemed more and more submerged in the New Deal coalition. The most active campaigners in addition to Roosevelt— Ickes, Wallace, Hugh Johnson—were men identified with the New Deal, not with the professional Democratic organization. Loyalty to the cause superseded loyalty to the party as the criterion for administration support. . . . It was evident that the basis of the campaign would be the mobilization beyond the Democratic party of all the elements in the New Deal coalition—liberals, labor, farmers, women, minorities.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/4512566.html