Bush got really exposed in this situation. Especially after the circumstances of how he got elected, he cannot alienate anybody those in his party. He needs every single vote to keep the Republican/conservative majorities in all government branches and to push forth a comprehensive conservative agenda. Now not only he lost one-half of the House, he will have a much harder time to cement a close conservative majority in federal courts. Furthermore, the way he treated Christine Whitman, former governor of NJ, and now Jeffords, in addition to the Giuliani/Hanover soap opera, the GOP will have a much tougher time making any further inroads in the Northeast, and may lose House seats in that region come 2002. along with Gephardt holding the gavel in the Senate chamber, bush will have a long 3 and 1/2 years.
The biggest winner in all this is Richard Gephardt, the would-be new Majority Leader. Now he can build a public rhetorical and political platform that can challenge Bush for sway in the American consciousness. Also, the moderates win as well. They can reassert their role in the poltical scene, and compel Bush to curb the most conservative parts of his agenda.
What is so funny is that so many of the conservative pundits are looking at the White House staff for blame, because of how they mistreated Jeffords the last few months. They are all but quoting the ECW fans’ chant: “You fucked up!! You fucked up!!” They are not calling Jeffords a traitor; they know that Vermontians has a different outlook to party participation and politics than most other parts of the country, and that his state was about to get screwed by new dairy legislation.
If Bush does it right, though, this may be a blessing in disguise. He can compromise much better than ex-majority leader Trent Lott and the other former GOP Senator leaders can, and his skills are much needed there to pass new laws and regulations that many Americans like.
I think this is the most telling point: Bush has done a lot to pay off the extreme right wing that was key to his getting elected. Now he can be more moderate without alienating them. He can point to Lott and blame him for losing Jeffords, and then compromise. He can still pass a large, but more moderate agenda, and come out as a president who got something done.
I wouldn’t be too optimistic about this. As even the august Tom Tomorrow has noted, the Democratic Party has been very sluggish about opposing Presidential Prerogative based on conscience.
It is refreshing to me to see the check writers get fucked for a change. I think the time is near for the non-check writing public to get their long overdue moderate third party.
I think I will go buy some Vermont maple syrup and some Cabot sharp Cheddar cheese. “Take back Vermont” indeed.
So the Dems control the Senate now and that’s a great advantage for them: they set the agenda, decide when and if bills are presented, gain numerical superiority on every committe, have free rein to institute committee hearings and call witnesses, can expect to have their chairmen and leadership on Sunday TV, etc. But their party is no less fractious than the Reps and Daschle will have a tough time holding them in line on key votes. Bush’s legislative successes so far have passed with 8-12 Dems anyway; one Senator crossing the aisle will have little effect in that respect.
But the fun is just beginning as the Reps try to decide just who dropped the ball. Lott and McConnell can expect leadership challenges and I would not be surprised to see Trent return to being junior senator from Miss soon. Karl Rove and his staff have to get failing grades for political savvy. Managing a campaign and managing a caucus are two different things and it’s hard to see how Rove can escape unscathed in this Rep disaster. And what about Cheney and his two (2) Congressional offices. If he had had one more I expect Chaffee or McCain would have bolted too.
But the man out there who will take the biggest shot is W himself. The Rep hard right owe him nothing; on the contrary, W includes them in his prayers every night for what they did for him. Now they’re pissed, and rightfully so from their perspective. They’ll buoy DeLay, Armey et al and make their stand in the House. Not so different really from the Clinton era.
Quite so, 'mint. Gephardt in the Senate belongs in the same fantasy world as W the great compromiser, ‘com-yoon-i-kay-tor’, legislative titan etc. which will blossom from this patch of adversity.
The prevalence of the anecdote about Jeffords being miffed over not getting invited for the teacher thing at the White House, this strikes me as a quickly cobbled-together smear job from the right. The first of many, doubtless.
The story tries weakly to re-conjure the same sort of disdain that the public expressed when Gingrich “shut down the government” because, as the story went, he was pissed that he was not allowed to sit up front on Air Force One when they were all returning from Yitzak Rabin’s funeral.
As far as keeping scary quack judges off the bench - while it’s true that Dems have been known to sometimes choke and vote for them (ClarenceThomas!coughcoughcough … excuse me), for the vast majority of judicial nominees they don’t have to - IF the name never comes to the floor.
And they won’t - I call your attention to the string of Clinton’s judicial nominees and how long they were held up by the GOP-held Senate. (Ambassadors, too.)
There are conservative democrats. There used to be a specie known as a liberal Republican, but it went extinct during the 1970s. Last December, I thought that the Republican party would attempt to broaden its appeal, which would imply strengthening the position of the Jeffords, Shaws, Roukemas and Chafees of the world. Clearly I was wrong.
D’oh! The relevant election is the next Vermont Gubernatorial, which is in 2002. Jeffords will be 69, which is a little old, but not wholly implausible. Still, if Jeffords wanted to run next year, I would think that he would join the Democratic Party rather than opt out as an independent. Still, if it worked for Lloyd Weicker…
Jeffords has been at odds with Republican leadership for a long time, but he stuck with the party. So why switch now?
Simple. Because he gains power in doing so. The Democrats targeted a handful of moderate Republicans, and started bribing them with chairmanships of influential committees and other perks if they would switch to the Democratic party. Jeffords took the bait.
I’m not criticising the Democrats, because the Republicans are doing exactly the same thing with people like Zell Miller and John Breaux. But at least let’s understand what happened here - this wasn’t a victory for Democracy, it was a pure power play in which one Senator screwed over his party in order to rise in statute and influence.
If the Senate was 47-53 instead of 50-50, Jeffords wouldn’t have switched parties, because the Democrats wouldn’t have needed him, and therefore wouldn’t have offered him anything. So he would have lost his fund-raising and gained nothing in return.
According to Washington insiders, another factor is the health of Strom Thurmond. If Jeffords wanted to switch parties, it was FAR better for him to do it now, while his bargaining position was so strong. If Thurmond had died before he switched, the Democratic party would have yanked back all those juicy perks so fast it would have made his head spin, because there was no longer that much value in gaining him within the party.
But you Democrats better not get too giddy over this - now the Republicans are in the same position the Democrats were in yesterday, they are going to sweeten the offers to Miller and others, and don’t be surprised if you see one of them jump to the Republicans and re-establish the status quo.
All you are seeing here is a public power struggle in Washington.
I wouldn’t call Jeffords a hero, but he definetly made a good decision. Let’s face it. Bush has not been doing a good job of promoting bipartisanship. People have been saying all along that Bush would have to wrok to unite the two different sides of the party, but he hasn’t done that. So far he’s pursued the right wing’s demands on every issue except education, and has still behaved as if he expected the moderates in Congress to continue voting the party line. Somebody had to step up and tell him that enough is enough. Does anybody think that it’s reasonable for Bush to keep kissing up to the right wing and not expect some sort of reaction from his party’s centrists?
I would not expect any other Republicans to make the jump during this election cycle, certainly not in the Senate. Senator McCain comes from a solid Republican state and he is more conservative on many issues than most people realize. And Senator Snowe from Maine would seem like a likely candidate, but she’s already clearly said no. Finally, the Democrats have decided to fill most of the committee chairmanships with Senators who have taken strong stances on the issues that they will be dealing with, and I doubt that they would want to give up the leadership of another committee to another moderate.
Had it been the other way, and a Democrat turned Republican (and there’s probably a pretty decent chance that might happen, or that one just might start voting his “conscience” along Republican lines,) I’d think the guy was a stinker.
Jeffords is neither a hero nor a traitor- merely a man of the Left who has finally left a party he never belobged with in the first place.
Frankly, I don’t understand why libveral Republicans insist on calling themselves “moderates.” "Moderate "suggests that they share MOST of the Republican party’s core principles, but deviate on one or two (like abortion, perhaps), or are willing to compromise just a bit, to settle for half a loaf.
Jeffords was never a “moderate” by that standard. He was a straight-down-the-line liberal Democrat in Republican clothing, the type who regularly allowed the Democrats to claim that their plans had “bipartisan” support.
I tire of “moderates,” frankly. I won’t miss Jeffords. (And it’s not as if he’d have voted to confirm any conservative judicial nominees anyway).
Such cynicism! Is it so inconceivable, ** Sam **, that the man really does find Dubya’s hard right stance unpalatable? It’s not as though he’s veering wildly off the course he’s been on his whole career, as I understand it.
And I don’t think the Dems would yank anything from anyone so fast. One vote, as we’ve seen, can easily change. I’m sure that with such a close count, every single man or woman that can be brought to their side will or would be treated kindly.
After all, they aren’t Bush, who kicks anyone in the ass that doesn’t fall right into line with what he wants to do.
Putz.
My only fear is that he might do something grossly out of character now, like LEARN from his mistake.
Nobody seems to have an answer for the fact that his threatening to turn would have been enough to get his “voice heard” in the Republican party.
If he beleived in the party of the past (as he claims to,) he would have used this leverage to provide a moderating influence.
His logic for making the switch doesn’t hold up to even casual scrutiny. After thirty years as a Republican he makes his change during the one time when he truly has power and can make a difference.
Anybody that doesn’t beleive a very big carrot has been dangled in front of this man is simply a naive fool.
But hey, so what? That’s the way the game is played. I just wish it wasn’t this way.
RTA and Stoid should go have their little myopic, shallow-minded liberal love child and be done with it.
Meanwhile, back at the OP.
As Scylla said, traitorous? heroic? Those are pretty extreme terms to apply.
I see it as somewhat less of a betrayal that he didn’t make a conversion from Republican to Democrat, but from Republican to Independent. I have heard, however, that he plans to caucus with the Demos. Let’s watch what plums now get sent his way.
It’s really hard to know what to make of it. As some have noted in this thread, I’ve been trying to gauge the readings of his constituents in Vermont (while trying to filter out the Stoidian/RTA-esque noise).
From what I understand, it’s a pretty independent-minded state that values individual principles over party. So where Jeffords might have been strung up for what he’s done in some states, it may not matter all that much in his home state.
Is it fair to say this wouldn’t have happened if the Senate weren’t 50-50? Methinks so.
As for the ultimate ramifications … shrug. The tax cut’s already through. Reagan worked with Tip O’Neill pretty decently. While I don’t agree with his political philosophies, I see Daschle as an honorable man. I have a lot of respect for the senator from my home state, Carl Levin, who will now become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, no doubt.
So if Jeffords is just easily bribed, why is it that he took the Democratic bribes instead of the Republican bribes? Or do those of you who ascribe to the bribery position think that Trent Lott wasn’t offering everything imaginable to keep Jeffords in the Republican fold once it became known he was considering leaving?
So the Democrats have an exceedingly narrow 50-49 advantage over the Republicans now, and Cheney still has the tie breaking vote, which will be important for party-line votes if the Republicans can get Jeffords to agree, which I imagine he will fairly often.
Incidentally, what has Bush done that is in any way different from what he campaigned on? The only thing I can recall was the issue of CO[sub]2[/sub] regulations. Aside from that, if you expected him to have been more of a moderate than he actually is, I don’t think you can blame him for that. He ran as a conservative, and now he’s doing exactly what he said he would.