{"id":2959,"date":"2004-11-04T12:50:19","date_gmt":"2004-11-04T17:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2959.html"},"modified":"2004-11-04T12:50:19","modified_gmt":"2004-11-04T17:50:19","slug":"lifes-about-to-get-worse-for-gop-moderates-so-at-least-one-might-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lifes-about-to-get-worse-for-gop-moderates-so-at-least-one-might-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"Life’s about to get worse for GOP moderates, so at least one might leave"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk like this<\/a> needs to be encouraged and cultivated every day for the next few years.<\/p>\n

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), perhaps the Senate’s most moderate Republican, told the Providence Journal that he might switch parties if President Bush were re- elected. “I’m not ruling it out,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chafee is going to be one unhappy Republican when the far-right’s “revolution” kicks up in January. He couldn’t bring himself to vote for Bush on Tuesday and he’ll have to swallow hard to back Bill Frist as Senate Majority Leader.<\/p>\n

But I think this is just the start. The soon-to-be-extinct GOP moderates in Congress, almost entirely made up of northerners from “blue” states, are in for a tough ride. Some will resist, but it’s almost laughable when you see quotes like this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The number-one item on my agenda is to try to move the party to the center,” [Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)] said. “I want to focus on the politics of inclusion.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He probably wasn’t kidding, but he may as well have been. Specter’s party is so desperate to leave the center behind<\/a>, it’s ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Exulting in their electoral victories, President Bush’s conservative supporters immediately turned to staking out mandates for an ambitious agenda of long-cherished goals, including privatizing Social Security, banning same-sex marriage, remaking the Supreme Court and overturning the court’s decisions in support of abortion rights.<\/p>\n

“Now comes the revolution,” Richard Viguerie, the dean of conservative direct mail, told about a dozen fellow movement stalwarts gathered around a television here, tallying up their Senate seats in the earliest hours of the morning. “If you don’t implement a conservative agenda now, when do you?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nFirst of all, it’s obvious the GOP is going to over-reach. It’s almost empowering to see these guys misinterpret this week’s election results. Viguerie’s quote, for all intents and purposes, could have been uttered word for word in 1994 by Gingrich & Co. and probably was. Newt was wrong then and it seems the right’s is prepared — indeed, is anxious — to repeat the mistake.<\/p>\n

For months, all the data has shown that the public backs Dems on a full range of domestic policies — health care, education, the environment, Social Security, etc. America doesn’t want a far-right “revolution,” and if the Republicans launch one, they’ll fail, just as Newt did.<\/p>\n

Second, while they try a more a radical approach, what’s left of the party’s centrists may be tempted, as Chafee is, to take that short walk across the aisle. After all, the process was hard on them before, but it’s about to get worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tuesday’s Republican sweep of the South will reshape the next Senate, replacing moderate Democrats sometimes willing to cross party lines with ardent GOP conservatives who will press their leaders for a more right-leaning agenda, according to analysts.<\/p>\n

[…}<\/p>\n

[Changes to Congress’ composition] have the potential to reduce the importance of Republican moderates, especially in the Senate, and embolden conservatives in the White House and elsewhere, these analysts said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

GOP moderates have lost every fight they’ve entered since 2000 — and that was before the right-wing base felt empowered to start running the show.<\/p>\n

Far-right tactics pushed Jim Jeffords out of the GOP, Chafee sounds like he has one foot out the door, and it’s only a matter of time before Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins see that this is a party that has little use for reasoned centrism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk like this needs to be encouraged and cultivated every day for the next few years. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), perhaps the Senate’s most moderate Republican, told the Providence Journal that he might switch parties if President Bush were re- elected. “I’m not ruling it out,” he said. Chafee is going to be one unhappy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}