Matt Lewis comes to TR’s defense and, I think, fails to defend TR from the relevant charges. Invoking TR’s impressiveness as a man does not rebut the philosophy he embraced (again, mostly post-presidency). As for the actual philosophy in question, Lewis mostly defends TR on the grounds that big business was really big back then, and TR had no idea how wrong his ideas would seem decades later. Lewis also writes:

And while Beck and I may disagree with much of TR’s “progressive” political philosophy, in an era when many conservatives are worried about the loss of American Exceptionalism—and about winning the war on terror—the patriotic “Roughrider,” TR—who promised to “speak softly and carry a big stick”—would probably make Dick Cheney look like a dove.

I’m at a loss as to why the nominee of the Progressive party and the man whose philosophy The New Republic was created to tout, needs “Progressive” in quotation marks around it.