I don’t know why Democrats would vote for a guy who was a Republican just three years ago, but good luck to him.
I do love that his campaign positions include switching the US to the metric system.
Going by his political positions, the Dems are a better fit for him. Apparently he is yet another moderate/liberal Republican who has fled in horror from the monstrosity of hatred, evil, craziness and willful ignorance that the GOP has become. So why not?
Your statement is a bit contradictory. If the Dems are a better fit for him, then why was he ever a Republican? Because he wasn’t smart enough to realize he was a better fit for the Democrats.
As to why Democrats would support him, they won’t. The party is taking a radical progressive turn for who knows what reason(the votes certainly haven’t been there), and a liberal Republican simply has no constituency within the party at this point in time.
Your man Reagan said it about the Democrats: He didn’t leave them, they left him.
C’mon, man.
Oh. Back to the Fox talking points today, I see.
Because the RWs have drugged the dialogue so far to the right that Joe McCarthy looks to them like a flaming liberal.
Because when he started the GOP wasn’t so screamingly ideologically far-RW as it is now, and someone with his politics could belong.
So the Gingrich revolution is now an example of moderate politics?
No, because Newt, et al (I always think of that time as the Hyde & Delay era), were well to the right of the president (that dude from Arkansas), and the president was very, very close to the position of the two Rs that preceded him. Newt only looks vaguely reasonable because he mostly has not sipped the tea.
You mean the same GOP that authored Obamacare? Then the answer to your question is “no”. Today’s GOP considers them flaming liberals and traitors to the “American Way of Life”. Not at all moderate.
From a social policy I’d say yes. The Contract With America avoided social issues. ISTR Gingich at the time pushing a line that it was more about getting the federal government out of people’s personal business than replacing the perceived Democrat tendency of legislating to achieve social goals with different social goals. That presentation of the revolution was pretty damned moderate in today’s GOP terms. It doesn’t mean that many elected in that wave weren’t socially conservative. It doesn’t mean they didn’t pursue more socially focused legislation after election. I could see someone presenting a similar position now being labeled a RINO by the Tea Party.
Gingrich is also more responsible than probably anyone for institutionalizing demonization of the opposing party and all of its members as a standard tool of electoral and governmental politics (see this memo). The Contract was just window-dressing, while the real revolution was the elimination of good will and compromise and progress that makes Congress such an embarrassment today. So yes, by current Republican standards, that’s moderation, even though it leaves only one party to be run by grownups.
Sorry to hijack this thread by talking about Chaffee. He’s not taken seriously here in RI. We like the guy, he’s one of our own, but his political career has been based on his father’s reputation and his general harmlessness. His vote against the Iraq war shows that he’ll stand on principle but no one thinks he has the chops for the real work of politicians. He can’t even carry this state if he survives until the primary because the Democratic Party has already gone full out for Hillary. He’s socially awkward, naïve in many ways, and for cryin’ out loud where did he get the idea that the metric systems was a presidential issue?
As far as I can tell, the only reason Chafee was ever Republican was because his dad was a Republican politician, so I suppose he wanted to be associated with him and follow in his footsteps. But, again as far as I can tell, Chafee isn’t even a moderate. I have not been able to find a single example of Chafee voting the way a Republican typically would. (If anyone else can, please share!)
The Northeastern variety of Republican has not been typical of the party for some time. They typically have been the sane, responsible adult type that used to be in charge of the party while letting the children run around. They could even regularly get elected. Nowadays most of them find the Democrats to be their more natural home, and Chaffee is just one example.
Pataki is another example of that, and Romney used to be until he developed presidential ambitions. Chafee at least had enough sense to see that he didn’t fit in to the national Republican Party.
I watched his speech. He’s a very poor public speaker. And he doesn’t seem to have a very good head for national politics. Pro tip: mentioning your experience living in Canada by way of supporting the metric system in your presidential candidacy declaration speech is bad politics.
That doesn’t have anything to do with his positions on substance, which are a grab-bag. But it means that they won’t matter much, because he doesn’t have the charisma to make people care.
He’s basically running on having opposed the Iraq War. Which is, obviously, a tried and true strategy. But I don’t see that it changes the dynamics of the primary much. Hopefully he’ll talk more about ending the Drug War.
He’s kind of the Jar-Jar Binks of the presidential candidates. We should get Buddy Cianci in there on the (R) side to mix things up a bit!
Buddy’s the guy we need to get on the national stage. In the Republican primary we could have him and Christie in a cage match instead of a debate.
100 Quatloos on Cianci!
At least he’s willing to go after Clinton. The other candidates seem to be assuming they won’t win so don’t want to damage her. Chaffee has gone so far as to say she should be disqualified for consideration due to her Iraq war vote.
The funny thing about that argument is that I’d bet everything I own that if she hadn’t taken that vote, the majority of Democrats would say that about any Republican voting for the war. Some might say it anyway.