Nov 23 2008
Obituary for the Northeastern RINO (Republican in Name Only)
I was saddened to hear on Election Night that Republican congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut was defeated for re-election by Democratic challenger Jim Hines, who won by a mere three percent of the vote (51 percent to 48 percent). Shays, who has represented the Constitution State’s Fourth District since 1987, barely survived the electoral bloodbath of 2006, when the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years. In that election, Shays squeaked by with, ironically, three percent of the vote (51 percent to 48 percent).
My sadness at Shays’ loss stems less from any personal feeling of affection for the man than from the fact that his imminent departure from Congress marks an advanced stage of decline for the great tradition of Northeastern Republicanism. Come January, New England Republicans will be entirely absent from the House of Representatives for the first time in 150 years. Also, if the region keeps trending toward the Democrats, New England Republicans will soon be extinct in the U.S. Senate as well.
And just what do conservative Republicans think of all this? Joseph Farah, an Evangelical Christian columnist, spoke for many of his ilk when he penned these lines in a recent article.
“This is a good thing – a very hopeful, even promising, eventuality for a potential rebirth of the Republican Party as a party of ideas.”
Whatever happened to that “big tent”? It’s awfully hard to be a “party of ideas” when everyone adheres to the same viewpoint.
It is almost incredible to believe that Republicans from the Northeast once made up the vanguard of the Grand Old Party before the balance of power shifted to the South and West. These Republicans often held moderate-to-progressive views on various policy issues and were known by their more conservative brethren as “Rockefeller Republicans” (after the late New York governor and liberal Republican icon Nelson Rockefeller) or RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only).
Many of the leading Northeastern Republicans were bluebloods from old dynastic families such as the Rockefellers, the Lodges and the Deweys. One dynasty in particular, the House of Bush, would come to symbolize the Republican Party’s tectonic shift across the political landscape.
Prescott Bush was the first member of his family to go into politics. He served in the U.S. Senate for 11 years (1952-1963) from the state of Connecticut. A former banker, Bush was the archetypical New England Republican with close ties with Big Business. He was also a social moderate who served as treasurer for Planned Parenthood, supported the United Negro College Fund, and voted to censure fellow Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy after the latter conducted a controversial investigation of alleged Soviet espionage in the U.S. Army.
Prescott’s son, George H.W. Bush, moved his family to Texas in the late 1940’s and represented that state in the House for four years. George would go on to serve as vice president in the conservative administration of Ronald Reagan, and then as president from 1988 to 1992. Despite his personal ties to the Lone Star State, he was always more of a New Englander than a Texan. Indeed, George H.W. Bush is regarded by many as a moderate Republican, much as his father was.
Prescott’s grandson, however, was a very different story. Although born and educated in New England, George W. Bush was raised in Midland, Texas, and it showed. As everyone knows, he ended up serving as governor of his adopted state and later as president of the United States for two terms. Ironically, Bush’s unpopularity as president would help accelerate the decline of the GOP’s Northeastern wing in Congress.
The recent campaign of former New York City mayor Rudy Guliani may well have been the last hurrah of the Rockefeller Republicans in presidential politics. Given his liberal views on a number of important issues, Guliani’s considerable popularity among the rank-and-file of the GOP always surprised me. Bur, of course, he was never meant to be the Republican nominee, despite his hawkish views on foreign policy and his status as “America’s Mayor.” The conservative base of the GOP has no more use for a Rockefeller Republican than the liberal base of the Democratic Party has for a Blue Dog Democrat.
Nothing lasts forever, and so it goes with the Northeastern Republicans. In future years, will anyone remember the names of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jacob Javits, John Chafee, Thomas Dewey, William Scranton, and Lowell Weicker? Probably not. Nevertheless, it was a great tradition while it lasted.
So in conclusion, here’s to you, Chris Shays, and all the other Northeastern Republicans who served America and made history! The Grand Old Party won’t be so grand without you, and that’s the truth.
You forgot to mention that Prescott Bush helped prop up Hitler’s Germany, but that’s really neither here nor there.
You can’t be a party of ideas when your ideas refuse to compete in modern society. Sooner or later, everyone has to move forward, and the current incarnation of the GOP doesn’t seem to want to do that. I would welcome an opposition party that was willing to debate and compete in the 21st Century, but until that point, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with a blue America.
I didn’t forget. I felt that the Bush family’s business connections with Nazi Germany were not relevant to the topic at hand. Interesting that you mention it though; not a lot of people are aware of that connection, I”m guessing you also read Kevin Phillips’ wonderful book AMERICAN DYNASTY.
I myself am an independent and i’m not happy with either party right now because i think they’ve become to ideological. I like to say that I”m Reagan on social policy, Clinton on economic/domestic policy, and Eisenhower (who, IMHO, was the best president of the Cold War) on foreign policy. I tend to prefer politicians from both parties who gravitate toward the center, like the Blue Dog Democrats and the moderate Republicans.
From my perspective, the Republican Party got “hi-jacked” by Neoconservativism, leaving many of us screaming, in Christine T. Whitman’s words, “but it’s my party too!”–but the reality has been a resounding “No it is not!” Okay, they are right, I am in no way aligned with anything the current RNC stands for and advocates. It is interesting though, that my discomfort with the RNC started with Reagan on social issues– Poverty, “Family Values”, HIV-Aids specifically. This need for “Lock-step” in thought should scare the pants off every American. It does not. That scares me for the rest of us.
I’d say both the neocons and the Religious Right have ruined the once-great GOP. The Paleo-conservatives (aka “The Old Right) and the libertarians are practically extinct and the moderates and liberals are either fleeing the party or being purged by the election process. It’s ironic how the Dems are helping conservatives “purify” their party by defeating their RINO brethren at the ballot box. Sean Hannnity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter may celebrate the departures of the likes of Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee and Chris Shays, but the GOP suffers as a whole. The Democratic Party has seen an infusion of more conservative Blue Dogs in recent election in some formerly “red” districts, but the leadership are often no better when it comes to tolerance of different vioewpoints.
Yeah, what we’re watching is an evolution (perhaps a decline, but not necessarily) of the GOP. I like your analysis of Guiliani–he was never a traditional “conservative” but would have had the best chance of defeating Obama, but the Republicans chose McCain instead. It shall be curious to see how they change in the future elections…
Tincup, i disagree with your statement that Guliani would have had the best chance of winning against Obama. Although it is highly unlikely that any Republican would have won, in hindsight, i think Romney would have been the best candidate. Guliani would have been an electoral disaster for the GOP. Think about it. He would have caused a revolt among the conservatives (who happen to make up the base of the party and who, given the almost even divide between the two parties, he would have neede to win), many of whom would have either stayed home on election day or went for a more conservative third-party candidate like Bob Barr.
As for attracting independents and liberal democrats, Guliani wouldn’t have been very successful there, either. Consider this. If you’re a liberal, and you have a choice between two liberal candidates, wouldn’t you rather go for the person who is MORE of a liberal than the one who is less? And if you’re a liberal who is antiwar, you’re certainly not going to go for Guliani. As for independents, I believe that many of them who went for Bush in ’04 ended up voting for Obama even though the Republicans were fielding a candidate (McCain) who was actually closer to their views than Dubya.
Why did this happen? I believe it happened for 3 reasons:
1. Obama is much more charismatic than McCain and I think many independents in the center liked his message of change and were disillusioned with Bush, 2. The spiraling economy, and 3. McCain, although hugely popular among centrists and even liberal dems during the 2000 primaries, had learned his lesson from that race and was forced to go to the right on many issues and had to pick someone like Sarah Palin in order to shore up the base. Although he tried to move back to the center in the general election, it just didn’t work. He scared off many independents, who were enamored of Obama in any case. Hell, as a centrist indie, he even scared me, but I ended voting for him because Obama scared me even more.
Had Guliani been in McCain’s position, he would have had to do the exact same thing McCain did, and, given the circumstances, would probably not have done any better.
One thing to note too is that, even though McCain veered heavily rightward to appease the base, many conservatives still ended up staying home and wouldn’t give his campaign any money, or much of it. Do you think Guliani, who is even more liberal than McCain, would have fared any better with these people? I doubt it.
As far as moderate Republicans are concerned, Guliani might have been more successful with this group than McCain, but as I point out above, they are almost extinct in American politics and would not have made much of a difference in any case.
There is discontent among the Democrats too. The farther left Democrats. The so-called Progressive arm of the Democratic party. Perhaps the Blue Dog Democrats and the Centrist Democrats will become the New Democratic Party and the progressives will break off into the Progressive party leaving the evangelicals to continue on their road to (hopefully) extinction alone.
I, personally, have a problem with Blue Dog Democrats. They may be social liberals but they hung with Bush in the destruction of the Constitution. They are subject to the same fear-mongering that the rest of the right wing is subject to: ready to sell their rights for a little bit of security which is as illusionary as is the threat from terrorists. That is not to say that the threat from terrorists is not real but that it is NOT on the same level as the threat from the Axis during WWII.
I was under the impression that the blue dogs were social conservatives, or at least socially moderate. i do agree about the national security issue. in that area, they are often no more different than republicans. Many of them have been staunch backers of the war. I find myself agreeing with them mainly on domestic issues, where they are slightly right-of-center, like me.