Farewell and so long to Jeffords

Sen. Jim Jeffords apparently awoke one day last month with the epiphany that the Republican Party was a home for conservatives. The liberal Republican senator realized that in the political world of liberals and conservatives, those on the right flocked to the GOP. Just last week, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, also a Republican, came upon the same startling discovery.

Jeffords, of course, decided to become an independent--shifting control of the Senate to Democrats. With his views already ignored by his party, Jeffords made the opportunistic realization that should any member of the aging Republican caucus die, he would lose his committee chair and perhaps be relegated to even less prominence within his former party.

Chafee's announcement, however, is alarming for its lack of pragmatism. The Rhode Island senator, who has a reputation for marching to his own drum beat, recently said he would leave the party if it were to regain the majority. Chafee's position begs the obvious question of why this man is even in the Republican Party. How would a change in control over one-half of one-third of the federal government alter either his party's politics or his own politics? What could possibly be keeping him with the Republicans when he plans to abandon them later? Perhaps he merely wants the media attention of being the latest maverick, but the willingness of some to turn the defections into something larger reveals a different underlying problem.

Realignment has been a theme in recent American politics. For instance, without the defections of Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Phil Gramm, Richard Shelby and even Strom Thurmond, the GOP could not have maintained control of the Senate for as long as it did this year. None of the four seems inclined to return to his former home in the Democratic Party. Times, parties and people change, and these shifts reflect those changes. The switches may have been hurting Democrats in recent years, but the most recent ones work to their benefit. If John Breaux or Zell Miller were to change party affiliations in the Senate, the situation would be reversed.

From the very start, Democratic leaders have portrayed themselves and their initiatives as moderate while claiming President George W. Bush strays too far to the right. What the pundits and Democrats really want is for Bush to support liberal initiatives--essentially to be a liberal. Or, at the very least, they want him to be more like his father in his willingness to acquiesce to the other sides' demands. As the weeks have shown, Bush will not be that kind of president. He may compromise, but he has not abandoned his fundamental beliefs.

Even though Bush did win the most electoral votes, Democrats are quick to say that he has no mandate because he did not with the popular vote. They also point to amorphous 2000 election problems in Florida as if only Republicans faced allegations for suspicious election behavior. In the end, they cannot ignore that Bush was the man who was sworn into office because he was declared the winner. Today, one man's change of heart and another's threat to follow suit do not give new Senate majority leader Tom Daschle's laundry list of initiatives any more of a popular mandate than Bush has.

Maybe Bush's stances actually do resonate with the general populace. In a special election Tuesday to fill Virginia's 4th Congressional District seat, Republicans claimed a seat which the late Democratic incumbent had held for 20 years. Looking at the election as an early evaluation of Bush's time in office, both parties spent heavily and previewed the issues predicted to be important in the 2002 midterm elections. Apparently, Republicans are not as out of touch as suggested. If Democrats had been victorious, they would certainly be trumpeting it as a sign of the Republican party's imminent demise.

Jeffords may not have been at home in the Republican Party, and Chafee may not be either. However, because they are out of touch with the party does not mean that the party is out of touch with the country.