Out of the three dozen or so Republicans who'd lost their seats in last Tuesday's midterm elections, by far the one most lamented in Left Blogostan is Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee. Chafee said right after the election that the refrain he'd heard most often from voters was that they were glad to see the Democrats back in power but sorry to see him leave.
Chafee is so liberal, in fact, that describing him as a moderate Republican simply doesn't do him justice. He was the only Republican to vote against going to war in Iraq and, just before the election, once again stood alone on the right side of the aisle to vote against the Military Commissions Act. In a way, he was the Russ Feingold of his party.
In fact, when looks at his seven year-long voting record in the US Senate, one wonders if he had become a life-long Republican simply to follow in the footsteps of his father, another Republican who'd held that same seat for 22 years. Chafee, I'd said to myself since following his primary race against Stephen Laffey, would've actually inspired a crisis in me if I was a Rhode Island resident: Would I vote for the virtually unknown Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse or would I vote for a Republican who always seemed to find himself (morally, not ideologically) on the right side of things? Being a Massachusetts resident, I'll never know.
But Chafee's fall from grace was what we'd call political collateral damage. Such close proximity to a radioactive GOP that had done nothing but divide, victimize and hold in complete contempt a nation that only wanted it to adhere to classically conservative ideals proved to have a random scattershot effect that Chafee, unfortunately, was Rhode Island's counterpart to Harry Whittington.
And speaking of Harry Whittington, Chafee has some interesting things to say in today's New York Times about Dick Cheney. The outgoing senator describes a meeting held in Arlen Specter's office after the 2000 general elections, a meeting held between Vice President-elect Dick Cheney and several moderate Republicans. Here're the most telling paragraphs in Chafee's editorial:
As we sat in Senator Specter's cozy hideaway office and discussed the coming session, I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international agreements and a muscular, unilateral foreign policy.
I was incredulous. Instead of a new atmosphere of cooperation and civility which, after all, had been the promise of the Bush-Cheney campaign, we seemed ready to return to the poisonous partisanship that marked the Republican-Congress -- Clinton White House years (emphasis mine).
I don't recall this ever being reported and it's notable that Chafee is just now making it known in the last two months of his Senate career.
Cheney was obviously not wasting his time preaching to the choir and was going after the swing votes among moderates like Specter, Snowe, Collins and, of course, Chafee. And this account only confirms and sets a pre-Day One timeline of the Bush White House's absolute and utter contempt for attempting to seek the middle ground and compromise that even now, six years later, Bush is piously preaching (or audaciously challenging the Democrats to follow, rather).
Chafee then includes the text of a letter that he'd written to Cheney after the meeting, one that we can safely expect immediately hit the circular file in Cheney's office. There were more important things to do, after all, like thinking of ways of enriching his "former" company Halliburton.
This op-ed article also brings into conspicuous relief the difference between Chafee and Joe Lieberman and the illogical nature of politics. Chafee, I'd always believed, was the epitome of what a Republican ought to be. If we'd had 49 more Republican senators like Chafee, I think that we wouldn't be in Iraq, we wouldn't have partisan Catholic maniacs on the Supreme Court and we certainly wouldn't have a debt and a deficit as huge as the one with which our childrens' and grandchildrens' generations will be saddled.
Lieberman is a McCarthy-esque example of what a turncoat, closeted Republican is. Lieberman, it's long been documented, votes with the GOP a full 55% of the time and has reliably stood next to his Brooks Brothers-suited brothers on the right side of the aisle on some of the most disastrous bills and nominations introduced into the Senate these past six years. He'd voted for cloture on some bills (the bankruptcy bill) and on nominations (Sam Alito) while voting against it a day later for the sake of his voting record.
Lieberman emptied his venom sacs into the eyes of "fellow" Democrat Ned Lamont while sparing his official Republican opponent Allen Schlesinger. He called Lamont a "son of a bitch" right after a debate because Lamont told the truth about him, resorted to GOP talking points, using GOP nomenclature (referring to Democrats as "the Democrat party" in his fliers) and graciously accepted the support of every right winger on TV and radio. To Lieberman, working with the GOP is always more important than working with his own party, who obviously, to him, has nothing to offer America. All Lieberman has to offer America is withering contempt for the "Democrat" party, Cheneyesque condescension toward its supporters, neocon talking points, a blood-soaked, losing war and torture.
And all in the pious name of bipartisanship and "reaching across the aisle."
We didn't see any of this in Chafee's campaign. Chafee had cultivated a solid reputation of being a conservative professional politician who was always a class act and never thought twice about abandoning neocon ideology to do a gut check at crunch time and do the right thing. Yet, Chafee's out and Lieberman's in. The Republican voters deserted Chafee, despite a 63% approval rating and Lieberman was carried back into the Senate on the shoulders of his fellow Republicans in the Nutmeg State.
I cannot understand how this could have happened but it's the perfect delineation of how insane and illogical the political process is and how the voters are inevitably responsible for the kakistocracy that our government all too often becomes. One could look at Chafee's loss in one of two ways or both: Either Democratic Rhode Island voters were so disenfranchised with Republicans that they were willing to go with the guy with the "D" after his name or Rhode Island's Republican voters didn't come out to support a guy who wasn't conservative enough.
Still, he adheres to his values even in defeat. He has vowed to oppose the Bolton nomination, all but assuring that Bush's damaged goods nomination never gets out of committee and is going down fighting. This stands in marked contrast to the wimpy, tear-stained concession speeches of fellow Republican losers Allen and Santorum, two clearly mentally unbalanced men who were devastated not because their parties had failed them but simply because they're no longer in power. And Chafee hasn't ruled out switching to the Democrats, not out of political expediency or populism but because, as Reagan said four decades ago of the Democrats, the party left him.
Understandably, I don't hold out any great hopes, nor any great love, for bipartisanship in the next two years or perhaps even in the next two election cycles. There are enough American voters, obviously, who are disinterested enough in reaching across the left side of the aisle to vote out a guy like Chafee who broke ranks with the GOP while voting back in a turncoat louse like Lieberman for embracing it.
The nation is still bitterly divided, people, and it always will be and don't think that this new Congress that's loaded with Democratic moderates, evangelicals and conservatives will be very successful in reversing this continental drift of ideologies.
JP
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