{"id":8459,"date":"2006-09-13T16:51:55","date_gmt":"2006-09-13T20:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8459.html"},"modified":"2006-09-13T16:51:55","modified_gmt":"2006-09-13T20:51:55","slug":"chafees-brand-of-republicanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/chafees-brand-of-republicanism\/","title":{"rendered":"Chafee’s brand of Republicanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always wanted to understand why, exactly, Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee stays in the Republican Party. By most reasonable definitions, he’s a fairly liberal senator. He not only refused to endorse Bush, he didn’t vote for him<\/a> and considered supporting a censure resolution<\/a> against him. He’s openly speculated<\/a> about switching parties more times than I can count and he represents a very “blue” state that would probably reward him if he did finally give up on the GOP.<\/p>\n

So why stay with a party that clearly is in a different place. Fortunately, Chafee explained his approach<\/a> yesterday, after managing to stave off a tough primary challenge.<\/p>\n

[Chafee] acknowledged being asked often: “Why are you a Republican?” And he repeated his definition of Republicanism, including fiscal discipline, environmental protection, individual liberty, aversion to foreign entanglements and “a willingness to use the tools of government to help the poor and the vulnerable.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was no indication he was kidding.<\/p>\n

Now, I understand that Chafee is part of a Republican family tradition. I can even understand a certain sense of loyalty to the party after it spent over $1 million to help him survive the primary. But look at his criteria again: fiscal discipline, environmental protection, individual liberty, aversion to foreign entanglements and “a willingness to use the tools of government to help the poor and the vulnerable.” That’s<\/em> his definition of Republicanism.<\/p>\n

The more I think about it, Chafee isn’t in the wrong party; he’s on the wrong planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always wanted to understand why, exactly, Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee stays in the Republican Party. By most reasonable definitions, he’s a fairly liberal senator. He not only refused to endorse Bush, he didn’t vote for him and considered supporting a censure resolution against him. He’s openly speculated about switching parties more times than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}