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March 17, 2006
Democrats Can't Let GOP Moderates Slide
By Froma HarropAbout a week before the 2000 election, a dozen prominent Rhode Island environmentalists gathered to toast Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee. They didn't even mention his Democratic opponent's name. Six years later, you wonder whether they're going to do the same dumb thing.
Democrats now have a fighting chance to gain the majority in at least one house of Congress. It would be quite a laugh, wouldn't it, if the Senate stayed in Republican hands because the liberals in America's most Democratic state helped re-elect Chafee.
Republican moderates are becoming as rare as the barnacle goose, but there are still enough of them to give the GOP control of Congress. The moderates argue that they serve the useful purpose of toning down their party's hard-liners. Once upon a time, that may have been true. The reality in 2006 is that GOP leaders ignore moderate Republicans when they're not spitting on them.
Chafee is the moderate that conservatives hate most. Count the ways he's gotten their goat: He refused to support George Bush in the last election, saying he'd write in the name of the president's father on his ballot. He was the only Senate Republican to vote against Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court and the war in Iraq. He opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When a reporter asked Mississippi's Trent Lott what he thought of Chafee, the Republican senator let out a laugh. "You have my response," he said.
In its "Dump Chafee" editorial, The National Review urged Rhode Island Republicans to replace Chafee in the primary -- even though he is the only Republican likely to win against the leading Democratic contenders. (Chafee is being challenged from the right by Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey.)
Cooler heads understand that Chafee serves a strategic purpose. The majority party gets to choose the powerful committee chairmen, and the moderates are needed to keep Republicans in the majority. As conservative activist Grover Norquist once put it, "A Republican from Rhode Island is a gift from the gods, and is not to be looked at askance."
That Chafee makes the right crazy delights Rhode Island liberals. He always reminds audiences that although there's an "R" after his name, he is as politically unencumbered as the bronze Independent Man holding his spear atop the Rhode Island Statehouse.
Of course, that is nonsense. If Chafee really wanted to be a standup independent guy, he would do as Vermont's Sen. Jim Jeffords did: become an independent. Jeffords famously left the Republican Party in 2001, after its leaders threatened Vermont dairy farmers if he didn't dance to their tune. His defection gave Democrats a majority in the Senate. And Democrats made him chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Hardly a day dawns in which someone doesn't ask Chafee why he's still a Republican. His response is always, "I was born a Republican." By that, Chafee means he is son of the late and revered Republican statesman John Chafee, and heir to the generations of Republicans that preceded him.
But let the genealogical records show that Vermont's Jeffords was every bit the Yankee Republican that Chafee is. Furthermore, Jeffords occupied the longest continually held Republican seat in U.S. history.
Chafee would do well to start thinking less about his ancestors and more about his descendants. On such future-oriented issues as the environment, Chafee is not so much a buttress against destructive right-wing forces as an enabler of them. Republicans like Chafee are the reason that James "Global Warming Is a 'Hoax'" Inhofe now runs the Senate committee on the environment, and not Jeffords. The Oklahoman took over after Senate Republicans regained their majority in the 2002 elections.
I recently had dinner with a Rhode Island liberal who spent the first half-hour moaning about the Republicans in Washington. He then said: "But I plan to vote for Chafee. I really like Chafee."
After counting to 10, I attempted to show how, given the current politics, the clam floating in his chowder would better serve his interests -- if that mollusk were a Democrat -- than the most magnificent Republican moderate ever born.
He responded, "Well, you ought to explain that in a column." And so I have tried.
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