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Here's a thing I didn't know until my book: the Supreme Court was so out-of-control in the 1930s that even the Republican 1936 Platform said it had gone too far, with Herbert Hoover and other prominent GOP members calling for a constitutional amendment against it. /1 
GOP was in a bad bind, because they argued both that the Supreme Court needed to be defended and the New Deal wasn't necessary as states could do it better. But then the Supreme Court invalidated states having a minimum wage for women in 1936, something it previously upheld. /2
As @JeffShesol's excellent book describes, this wasn't wonky administrative law about sick chickens; the minimum wage was extremely popular, and SCOTUS became erratic and unpredictable on how and why they'd let it survive, exactly what post-Lochner critics said would happen. /3
This whiplash over state-level minimum wages is what the GOP means with language about "Constitution as it now stands" and "power it already had." The case (Tipaldo) was seen by GOP as essentially nullifying their whole argument, and they had giant internal fights over it. /4
Ironically the Dems' common wisdom was that attacking the court in an election year hurt Bryan, TR, and La Follette, so FDR didn't touch it until 1937. He considered working with GOP on an amendment, but worried it would take too long to save Social Security and Wagner. /5
In one sense his proposal was less radical as it just changed the number of Justices, working within Constitutional powers, rather than rewriting it. Yet it was very unpopular, if only for a botched rollout. GOP attacked it and flushed their own history. /fin
