Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.
Chafee said he disaffiliated from the party “in June or July,” making him an unaffiliated voter. He did so quietly, and until yesterday, he said, “No one’s asked me about it.” He said he made the move because “I want my affiliation to accurately reflect my status.”
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http://www.projo.com/news/content/CHAFEE_GOP_09-16-07_D…
“There’s been a gradual depravation of … the issues the party should be strong on,” and the direction of the national party, he said.
He sums things up nicely, doesn't he?
like when he was still in the Senate, so that it would actually have mattered. Not sure anyone cares now.
these Republicans who now talk about how Bush is soooo awful, but worked to help his failed policies in the past deserve a little scorn from the public.
Apathetic shrugs are too good for them.
Better late than never, but not all that much. The essence of leadership is being able to take difficult positions when it matters, not years later.
I think it is hard to cross that Rubicon and make that choice. particularly where there are family ties involved. I believe the project of promoting a moderate GOP is hopeless, but I can respect someone who gives it a try, at least once.
That said, so-called moderate Bush enablers who continue to strive for the balance of power deserve only our scorn.
…you can switch now, or after you lose. Your choice.
Let's send her packing in '08 – support Tom Allen! I'm matching the next $415 dollars donated at my ActBlue page (linked in my sig line) at $.50 on the dollar – help Tom show Susan Collins the door!
Senator Collins' second choice for political party would be the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.
Since Lieberman has registered as a Democrat in his new hometown in Stamford. That makes his party switch in 2006 of questionable legality, shall we say. This message from the Chair of the CT for Lieberman Party explains it well.
PS: For anyone not familiar, the C4L Chair is actually a Lamont supporter who was smart enough to take over the shell party and be a thorn in Mopey Joe's side.
I thought I set that one up nicely for you, Sabutai.
is the straight wo/man.
…for a Mainiac to be running under the banner of a Connecticut for Anyone party, in Maine.
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Sabutai, I read about the Lamont supporter taking the helm of the CT for Lieberman party a while ago. It was funny as heck.
You read no fiction or poetry, right?
…I was making a moderately humorous comment on what was, to me, obviously a moderately humorous comment.
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Not everything on a political web.site needs to be taken seriously. Even on a political web site. Pardon my error.
a long time. We had some great moderates in the New England Republican contingent years ago like Frank Sargent and John Sears. Weld sold himself this way but he really wasnt that moderate. Neither was Romney. I think Jane Swift was pretty moderate, but she was an outlier who was thoroughly trashed by a combination of the media and the Republican operativees who wanted to bring in Romney.
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For the most part I think that we have a nostalgia for the real moderate Republicans and the fakes like Weld and Romney have benefitted.
Id disagree. It takes a lot of backbone to rebuke your party on issues from choice, to the environment, to corporate regulation, to Iraq. Colin Powell should have said what he felt and resigned over Iraq which might have actually stopped the war, instead the moderate technocratic general turned statecraft expert sold himself and the American people on the war. Similarly Greenspan publicly supported the Bush tax cuts while privately condemning them. Chaffee was consistent, he publicly opposed the Bush agenda on several fronts, he refused to endorse Bush for re-election, and he very publicly opposed the Iraq war unlike several Democrats lacking backbone including several who are considering running for President.
I felt terrible for Chaffee but with “enemies” like him who needs “friends” especially friends like Lieberman, , Edwards, or Kerry that took more conservative stances on many core progressive issues but were on national Democratic tickets. Or Clinton who is actually more hawkish on Iraq than several Republican presidential candidates and has been silent on the surge.
Also Chaffee is a humble and classy guy, he did not pull a Zell Miller and angrily condemned his party in a deranged speech towards its oppositions convention, he did not pull a Jim Jeffords and defect, and he was incredibly silent about switching parties unlike that publicity hog Bloomberg who boarded the SS GOP when it was a popular cruise and abandoned it as soon as it started leaking water.
Lets face it Chaffee was a proud and true progressive Republican, certainly not a liberal Democrat, but progressive with a small p in the same sense as Teddy Roosevelt, John and Thomas Dewey, Herbert Hoober, Alf Landon, and a host of other Republicans. His was a loss to progressives, and while Whitehouse is just as liberal if not more so on most issues he lacks the passion and courage that propeled Chaffee to redeem his party for the better.
Remember the Democratic party still stands for three things: pork, patronage, and progress. And it will always stand ditch the third when it threatens the first two.
…interesting but misplaced. If Chaffee had pulled a Jim Jeffords (former US senator from VT) and run as an independent (incorrect metaphore, but you get the idea) while promising to caucus with the Democrats, he probably would have been re-elected. But he didn’t do that.
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The problem that you have is that the Republican party of Theodore Roosevelt, etc., and even the party of Nelson Rockefeller, is not the Republican party of today. The Republican party of today is basically run by the Dixiecrats, largely, but not completely due to Nixon’s Southern Strategy (the migration of the Dixiecrats from the Democratic coalition to the Republican coalition actually began much earlier).
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Regarding
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Remember the Democratic party still stands for three things: pork, patronage, and progress. And it will always stand ditch the third when it threatens the first two.
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the Republican party under Reagan and the two Bushes has stood for the first two, and has at most given lip service to the third.
but Jim Jeffords showed more intestinal fortitude than Chaffee did.
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The most important vote any Senator casts is for majority leader, and by voting for Trent Lott and Bill Frist, Chaffee made sure that women’s rights to choose were always in danger, that aid to the poor was on the chopping block, and that the minimum wage would never be raised… oh, and that Republican Cmte chairs would do no oversight of the Bush Admin. It’s fair to complain about John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton voting for the AUMF–but their mistakes don’t make Chaffee shine.
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BTW, Herbert Hoover? The man who said, “The white race cannot survive without dairy products.” Hoover?
Hoover gets a bad rap, but basically every major New Deal idea from Rural Electrification, the NRA (Relief not Rifle Association), the WPA, and the CCC all stemmed from his last year in office and the reason the first 100 days got so much done is because Hoovers people already had the laws on the docket the second the 33' Congress was sworn in. FDR in fact ran as a fiscal conservative and promised to end the Depression by balancing the budget and ending the deficit spending of the Hoover years, blaming Hoover for the deficit as well as the Depression. Also Hoover was in 1928 the most progressive of the two candidates supporting womens suffrage which Smith opposed, birth control rights which Smith opposed, ending state funding for religious schools which Smith opposed, continuing Prohibition which was a progressive cause which again Smith opposed, and he had a much better platform/record on Civil Rights than FDR or Smith did since they still needed the Southern Dems for the nomination.
Its ironic that Hoover basically came up with the New Deal, spent many sleepless nights thinking about how to solve the problem, got blamed for an economy he had nothing to do with shaping, and then FDR not only blamed him for his ideas but later adopted him as his own and took all the credit.
Basically KBusch is right up until the 1930s the Republicans were the progressive party, in fact all of FDRs opponents ran to his left on economic issues, and only ran to the right on foreign affairs (isolationism which is now popular in the Democratic party) and also rightly against most of FDRs unconstitutional proposals. Imagine if Bush tried the court packing scheme how much the left would go after him when their hero committed arguably more aggregious violations of the Constitution both during the Depression and the Second World war.
I have been thinking about how Democratic progressives cannot really trace their lineage back to progressive era politicians. However, it is probably true that liberal and even moderate Republicans can trace their political lineage to that era.
goes via the Roosevelts, and FDR's VP who was the Progressive candidate against Truman.
If you were in the GOP all your life and wanted to change it from the inside you would still support your Majority leaders since again on issues of government spending the GOP is still a far more progressive party than the Democrats, well at least pre-Bush when even the far right nominees like Dole and McCain when balanced budgets were still in the GOP platform.
I am honestly hoping that the Democrats win big this year and assemble a true governing coalition that will hopefully last a generation and realign politics back to the rational center-left. And that will also bring the GOP hopefully to a rational center right a la European/Canadian conservatives.
Everything we hear about the current Republican debates with their doubling Gitmo and manly efforts at preventing Iran from allying with Al Qaeda would indicate that it will be a reMerkelably long time before they achieve European rationality.