I didn’t know until recently Abraham Lincoln ended slavery and passed the first U.S. income tax, too! A pretty progressive policy agenda for a Republican. But that was 150 years ago. It must have been a one-off.

Not really. Progressives have had a long run in the party.

I had thought the income tax was enacted in 1913, when the states ratified the 16th amendment to the Constitution. Apparently, the amendment was necessary to establish the federal government’s power to do so after the Supreme Court declared Lincoln’s income tax unconstitutional. The amendment was proposed in 1909 during the term of President W. H. Taft, also a Republican. He was President Teddy Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor to further the progressive policies of Roosevelt’s wing of the Republican Party. Taft ultimately disappointed Roosevelt, and the progressives split from the party to form their own. The Progressive Party got 25 per cent of the vote in 1912, siphoning off enough Republican votes to elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson president.

Although the Progressive Party didn’t make it much past the election, GOP progressives survived the split and saw their policies enacted under Republican administrations at least through the Eisenhower and Nixon presidencies. Eisenhower expanded Social Security and proposed the Interstate Highway System, partially funding it with a gas tax. He supported equal rights for women and Blacks, advancing the progressives’ legacy of social reform. Surprisingly perhaps, many progressive ideas also emerged under Richard Nixon, who established the EPA and OSHA, expanded Medicare and Social Security, supported Title IX, the ERA, lowering the voting age to 18 and abolishing the Electoral College (unsuccessfully, alas). Even George W. Bush added prescription drug coverage, a huge new entitlement, to Medicare and Medicaid.

The GOP’s war on its progressive wing began in earnest under Ronald Reagan, who declared in his 1981 inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Whereas progressives wanted to use the power of government to solve social and economic problems, Reagan Republicans had been convinced by a new breed of economic theorists that the “invisible hand” of the market would solve its own and the broader society’s ills if only government would get out of the way. Not only that, taxes could, and should, be cut to give the market the wherewithal to get the job done. Conservatives promoted “supply side” economist Arthur Laffer, who promised tax cuts would pay for themselves. Supply siders said it worked through the magic of the Laffer Curve, which claimed lower taxes ultimately resulted in higher federal revenue due to a surge in business activity.

So much for progressive, Galbraithian economics.

The progressive social agenda got its cancellation notice a few years later, when Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist in 1994 put out their Contract with America. The Contract itself was a blueprint for a national GOP legislative strategy. Politicians who signed it promised to enact “limited government” laws and pledged never to raise taxes. Norquist unified GOP factions around the Contract and drew into the movement conservative groups like the NRA, the Christian Coalition and like-minded business interests. The gun rights activists and conservative evangelicals brought with them a far-right social agenda that began to creep into Republican political platforms. Opposition to gun reform, abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues became entrenched alongside a new-found interest in suppression of voting rights, which had reemerged after the Civil Rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s. Progressive, even moderate, Republicans were getting scarce.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 might have been the death knell for the few GOP moderates and progressives who stuck with the party. Trump took radical conservatism to a new level, where immigrants and people of color were reviled and autocrats and white nationalists praised or condoned. Free market progressivism bowed to protectionism, international activism yielded to isolationism. Trump’s erratic political whims drove away all but the most zealous conservatives. And his egotism and emotional insecurity led him to attack and try to drive out of the party anyone not sufficiently loyal.

So, where are the Republican progressives today? Most have died or retired, some have become Never Trumpers, a handful have tried to rally a caucus of remnants. Can they pull off what Teddy Roosevelt did and build a new party of progressive Republicans? Third parties have had a poor showing in our winner-take-all system. Still, the political climate is changing. The outlook is liberal, but probably not progressive.