James Jeffords,
Traitor to the Republican PartyLast week a political earthquate occurred. The Republican to Democrat balance in the US Senate was exactly 50:50. James Jeffords, RINO, (Republican In Name Only), declared himself to be an "Independent". This gave the Democratic Socialist party a 50:49:1 balance. Ordinarily this would not bother me much. However, what is at stake is the quality of the Supreme Court Judge nominees that President GW Bush will now be able to field. Currently, Utah's senator Orrin Hatch, also a RINO, chairs the Judicial Committee. It wll now be chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, an extreme leftist-socialist. Leahy's penchant is for activist justices. Activist justices declare the US Constitution a "living document" such as AlGore did during the Clinton administration. This meant that rather than interpreting the Constitution as it is written they simply run off the map any way they choose and call it law. Jeffords' defection was done purely for his own self interest. He waited until he had been elected to a 6 year term from Vermont and seeing that the Democratic Criminal Party would offer him more than the Republicans he used the 50:50 split as a lever to further his own career. If Jeffords was ethical he would have called a special election and ran again for his position as an Independant or Democrat-which is where his votes and sympathies are anyway. The now Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, D-S.D., criticized another Democrat who went Republican for not doing exactly the same thing. But suddenly Daschle thinks it's just fine for Jeffords to stab the Vermonters in the back instead of doing the honest and ethical thing Daschle previously thought was right. The Democratic leadership are cunning street fighters without scruples or ethics. This is just another example.
Reagan Didn't Appease Jeffords, He Mobilized Public Opinion and Defeated Him
Extremist Senator Quits GOP
By Terence P. Jeffrey
The week of May 28, 2001
James Jeffords, the senator from Vermont who has been a lifelong advocate for a dark and mean-spirited view of American life, has left the Republican Party. He was not forcibly expelled. He left of his own accord.
The reaction of the Republican leadership in the days leading up to Jeffords’ long-rumored defection was lamentably predictable. Supine does not capture it. They were absolutely abject in their attempts to appease the man.
Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R.-Okla.), ordinarily a sensible conservative, described for the Washington Times the political bribes proffered to Jeffords in the last-ditch effort to keep him in the party. "We contemplated [making him] king of the Senate," said Nickles, "but we don’t have that position yet."
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.-Miss.), however, did offer Jeffords a non-elected position in the Republican leadership. That position—which Jeffords could never have won by democratic means—would have given a minuscule, mean-spirited minority of the GOP even more leverage than they already have over the party’s majority.
Outside Mainstream
Ironically, it was this very strategy of appeasing Jeffords—and the handful of Republicans who share Jeffords’ unsavory vision—that had in fact attenuated the hard-won Republican majority of 1994 to the point where Jeffords alone could wield a veto over the party’s agenda in the Senate.
Make no mistake: Jeffords sits far outside the mainstream of American politics.
His vision is in deep conflict with cherished American values—including values expressly protected in the Bill of Rights that until recently were shared and promoted by Republicans and Democrats alike.
As a senator who fraudulently claimed the mantle of Lincoln, Jeffords advocated an agenda that, in some of its elements, would have been deemed down right criminal by Democratic politicians as late as the Kennedy era.
Who in Jack Kennedy’s White House in 1963, for example, would have advocated partial-birth infanticide as a constitutional right, or demanded passage of a federal law codifying homosexual behavior as the legal equivalent of being Asian, Latino or African American? Jeffords did both. He voted to sustain President Clinton’s veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, and supported adding "sexual orientation" to federal civil rights laws.
Hailed by the liberal press as a "fiscal conservative and social moderate," Jeffords is neither. He is a social and fiscal extremist. Throughout his career he has routinely acted in contempt of both the right to life and private property, which are the foundations of any legitimate government. And in foreign policy, he has persistently and recklessly advocated disarmament and appeasement, putting at risk the security of the nation itself.
During the Cold War, he opposed every one of President Reagan’s major strategic proposals.
In 1983, when Reagan tried to counter and reverse the Soviet buildup of nuclear missiles in Europe, Jeffords joined Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) in pushing for a nuclear freeze that would have kept in place the Soviet nuclear advantage. He also repeatedly voted against the MX missile, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and aid to Nicaragua’s freedom fighters.
Rather than adopt Jeffords’ irrational approach, or compromise with it, Reagan enacted his own vision over Jeffords’ opposition. And Reagan did it with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
Jeffords clearly did not understand the threat posed by Marxists abroad, and he sometimes advanced Marxist proposals here at home.
Last year, he voted against repealing the 55% federal death tax that forces families to sell their businesses on the death of a loved one.
In 1993, when First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to seize 15% of the U.S. economy by nationalizing the health care industry, Jeffords sponsored her proposal in the Senate. Under the Jeffords-Clinton plan, every doctor and nurse in the United States would have been converted into a government bureaucrat. Every American seeking medical care would have been forced to seek it through a government agency.
Opposed Reagan’s 1981 Tax Cut
So many congressional Democrats opposed this socialistic monstrosity that the Democratic leadership could not force it through a Congress they fully controlled.
But Jeffords’ efforts then were of a piece with his 1981 vote against President Reagan’s tax-cut package, and his vote this year against President Bush’s plan to cut the top income tax rate.
This time around Jeffords told Bush he would agree to the tax cut only if Bush agreed to spend an additional $180 billion for federal education programs.
Fiscal conservative, they call him?
To call Jeffords that is as plain a lie as the lies Bill Clinton told the federal grand jury. And, of course, Jeffords took an oath to do impartial justice in Clinton’s impeachment trial and then voted that Clinton was "not guilty" of lying to the grand jury, or obstructing justice from the Oval Office.
Those votes were themselves acts of perjury.
But Jefford’s most vicious act came in 1991.
That was when the first President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jeffords summarily rejected the nomination, saying that Thomas, a black man from Pin Point, Ga., embraced a vision of government too "pinched" to serve the interests of impoverished and disenfranchised Americans. No, that was a job for Jeffords—the second-generation lawyer from Vermont.
When Democratic Senate leaders failed to defeat Thomas by honest means, they resorted to character assassination. Jeffords aided them by joining with Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to accuse Thomas of perjury. "I disbelieve him," Jeffords told reporters of Thomas’ testimony in the Anita Hill matter.
For Jeffords, Thomas was guilty, Clinton was not. For Jeffords, it was necessary to keep Thomas off the court, and Clinton in the White House. Can it be doubted that in each case, ideology, not truth, determined Jeffords’ verdict?
The Republican Party should have turned its back on this dismal man years ago.
But we now have two historical models for how Republicans can deal with those like him. We have the Reagan model, and the Bob Dole-Trent Lott model. When Jeffords and his Democratic allies tried to block Reagan’s agenda, the Gipper didn’t appease them, he defeated them. He went over the heads of the extremists and appealed directly to the spirit of the American people. The people backed Reagan, and rejected Jeffords.
Bob Dole and Trent Lott tried instead to appease Jeffords. In the process, they moved the GOP away from its core values.
By backing into big government deals with Bill Clinton and backing away from the socially conservative elements in their own agenda, they disillusioned their conservative base and reduced their ability to reach out and win support from socially conservative Democrats who helped Reagan triumph in the 1980s. As they did so, their majority dwindled.
Finally, they found their fate delivered into Jeffords’ hands.
That day was predictable.
But so, too, is the conservative resurgence if the Republicans now stand and fight.
© Human Events, 2001
A Turncoat: In His Own Words
The week of May 28, 2001
In last year’s presidential election, Sen. James Jeffords (R.-Vt.) endorsed George W. Bush for President, and presumably voted for him over Al Gore. In the presidential elections preceding that, he endorsed, and presumably voted for, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
But once each of these Republican Presidents was in office, Jeffords turned against his programs and his nominees, fighting them, criticizing them and voting against them as they came up in Congress. (In the case of Reagan, Jeffords opposed just about every initiative that eventually brought down the Soviet Union.)
In his statement last week announcing his resignation from the Republican Party, Jeffords said "the election of President Bush" dramatically changed his status in the GOP. How could that be?
"Looking ahead," said Jeffords, "I can see more and more instances where I will disagree with the President on very fundamental issues—the issues of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment, and a host of other issues, large and small."
Yet, Bush explicitly campaigned as a pro-life, pro-judicial restraint, pro-tax cut, pro-limited government, pro-missile defense, pro-energy Republican. In his first months in office, he has done nothing more than stay true to and live up to these well-known campaign commitments. Jeffords, a prominent Bush supporter and voter, should have applauded Bush for following through on the agenda that Jeffords knew Bush backed when Jeffords decided to support him for President.
Jeffords’ explanation for his defection, in other words, is simply not believable.
But, then, Jeffords has said many incredible things over the years. Here is a look back at his history of undermining the Republican Party, in his own words:
Opposing the Reagan tax cuts
"I can’t go back to Vermont and tell an elderly widow that we have had to cut her Social Security so that we can afford new multibillion dollar welfare programs for the oil companies and a few of the other wealthiest corporations in the world."
—July 28, 1981
Passing the Grove City bill, expanding federal regulatory power over private institutions
"When the government hands out checks, it has a right to attach conditions, and one condition is that you can’t discriminate if you take public money."
—March 23, 1988
Condemning Clarence Thomas
"This, I think, is the fundamental failing of Judge Thomas’ judicial philosophy: His view of the role of government, and particularly the role of Congress in society, is pinched and penurious. The alternative is not profligacy. Rather, it is a government that is acting aggressively to secure a more just society."
—Oct. 8, 1991
Accusing Clarence Thomas of Dishonesty
‘’I disbelieve him. I won’t call him a liar. I don’t like that word. I’ve analyzed it and I believe Anita [Hill].’’
—Oct. 14, 2001
Cutting funding for Strategic Defense Initiative
"Now I fear that the greater threat to this nation comes not from an ICBM strike by some former Soviet Republic, or a fledgling nuclear power, but rather from the inability of the United States military to carry out some future mission because Congress and the White House have refused to make the hard choices in the long-lead, high-technology programs."
—Sept. 9, 1993
Subjecting U.S. troops to UN command after American deaths in Somalia
"We cannot afford an ostrich-like indifference to such events simply because they may occur in areas outside our traditional sphere of vital military interest or because action on our part entails real costs."
—Oct. 14, 1993
Supporting partial-birth abortion
"I believe that this bill undermines the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to leave these critical matters to the states."
—Sept. 18, 1998
Acquitting Bill Clinton
"Having found that the President is guilty of obstructing justice in the Paula Jones case, I had to determine whether the violation is a ‘high crime’ warranting removal from office. This led me to think about what justice was actually being obstructed and to consider the underlying circumstances that brought us here today. . . . There was no justice to obstruct in the Jones case."
—Feb. 12, 1999
Opposing the Bush budget
"I cannot support a budget that puts large tax cuts and unlimited defense spending ahead of educating our nation’s children."
—May 10, 2001
© Human Events, 2001
Jeffords Jumps:In his own words.By Sen. James Jeffords (VT, I.)Good morning, everyone.
Anyone that knows me knows I love Vermont. Vermont has always been known for its independence and social conscience. It was the first state to outlaw slavery in its constitution. It proudly elected Matthew Lyon to Congress, notwithstanding his flouting of the Sedition Act.
It sacrificed a higher share of its sons in the Civil War than perhaps any other state in the Union. And I recall Vermont senator Ralph Flanders's dramatic statement 50 years ago, helping to bring the close on the McCarthy hearings — a sorry chapter in our history.
Today's chapter is of much smaller consequence. But I think it appropriate that I share my thoughts with my fellow Vermonters.
For the past several weeks, I have been struggling with a very difficult decision.
It's difficult on a personal level, but even more difficult because of the larger impact in the Senate and also the nation. I have been talking with my family and a few close advisers about whether or not I should remain a Republican.
I do not approach this question lightly. I have spent a lifetime in the Republican Party and served 12 years in what I believe is the longest continuous held Republican seat in history. I ran for re-election as a Republican just this past fall, and had no thoughts whatsoever, then, about changing parties.
The party I grew up in was the party of George Aiken, Ernest Gibson, Ralph Flanders, Winston Prouty, and Bob Stafford. These names may not mean much today outside Vermont, but each served Vermont as a Republican senator in the 20th century.
I became a Republican not because I was born into the party, but because of the kind of fundamental principles that these and many Republicans stood for: moderation; tolerance; fiscal responsibility. Their party — our party — was the party of Lincoln.
To be sure, we had our differences in the Vermont Republican Party, but even our more conservative leaders were in many ways progressive.
Our former governor, Dean Davis, championed Act 250, which preserved our environmental heritage.
And Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, our nation's 30th president, could point with pride to his state's willingness to sacrifice in the service of others. Aiken and Gibson and Flanders and Prouty and Bob Stafford were all Republicans, but they were Vermonters first. They spoke their minds, often to the dismay of their party leaders, and did their best to guide the party in the direction of those fundamental principles they believed in.
For 26 years in Washington, first in the House of Representatives and now in the Senate, I have tried to do the same, but I can no longer do so as a Republican. Increasingly, I find myself in disagreement with my party. I understand that many people are more conservative than I am and they form the Republican Party. Given the changing nature of the national party, it has become a struggle for our leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them. Indeed, the party's electoral success has underscored the dilemma that I face within the party.
In the past, without the presidency, the various wings of the Republican Party in Congress have had some freedom to argue and influence and ultimately to shape the party's agenda. The election of President Bush changed that dramatically.
We don't live in a parliamentary system, but it is only natural to expect that people like myself, who have been honored with positions of leadership, will largely support the president's agenda.
And yet, more and more, I find I cannot. Those who don't know me may have thought I took pleasure in resisting the president's budget or that I enjoyed the limelight. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had serious substantive reservations about that budget, as you all know, and the decisions it set in place for the future.
Looking ahead, I can see more and more instances where I'll disagree with the president on very fundamental issues — the issues of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment, and a host of other issues, large and small.
The largest for me is education. I come from the state of Justin Smith Morrill, a U.S. senator from Vermont who gave America its land grant college system. His Republican Party stood for opportunity for all, for opening the doors of public school education to every American child.
Now, for some success seems to be measured by the number of students moved out of the public schools.
In order to best represent my state of Vermont, my own conscience and principles I have stood for my whole life, I will leave the Republican Party and become an Independent.
(APPLAUSE)
JEFFORDS: Sorry for that.
Control of the Senate will be changed by my decision.
AUDIENCE: Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff.
JEFFORDS: I'm sorry for that interruption, but I understand it.
I will make this change and will caucus with the Democrats for organizational purposes once the conference report on the tax bill is sent to the president. I gave my word to the president that I would not intercept or try to intervene in the signing of that bill.
My colleagues, many of them my friends for years, may find it difficult in their hearts to befriend me any longer. Many of my supporters will be disappointed, and some of my staffers will see their lives upended. I regret this very much.
Having made my decision, the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders now hangs heavy on my heart, but I was not elected to this office to be something that I am not. This comes as no surprise to Vermonters, because independence is the Vermont way.
My friends back home have supported and encouraged my independence. I appreciate the support they have shown when they have agreed with me, and their patience when they have not. I will ask the support and patience again, which I understand will be very difficult for a number of my close friends.
I have informed President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Senator Lott of my decision.
They are good people with whom I disagree. They have been fair and decent to me, and I have informed Senator Daschle also of my decision. Three of these four men disagree with my decision, but I hope each understood my reasons. And it's quite entirely possible that the fourth one, with my independence, may have second thoughts down the road. But anyway, that's the way it is.
I have changed my party label, but I have not changed my beliefs. Indeed, my decision is about affirming the principles that have shaped my career. I hope that the people of Vermont will understand it. I hope in time that my colleagues will as well. I am confident that it is the right decision.
Yes?
Q: Senator Jeffords, what do you say to those people who, only six months ago, voted for you as a Republican…
(APPLAUSE)
Q: ... so what do you say to them (OFF-MIKE)
JEFFORDS: Right. I understand, and I'm sorry that I had no expectation of it.
Q: (OFF-MIKE) you were his campaign chairman, obviously?
JEFFORDS: I was not the campaign chairman, but that's a small point. I believed at the time and had hoped at the time that those of us that are the moderates of the party, not just myself — and I speak, I'm sure, for many moderates in the party who had high hopes when the president spoke of education and when he gave his dedication to education — that we would be able to follow him, and I praise the president for his education package.
It will alert this nation, every student, every school, every state will know exactly how bad they are.
And that's the problem that I have with it. Because there are terrible problems out there that will have to be solved, and that is why in the budget process, I stood up and said, no, we can't give all this money back. We have too many high priorities--education, number one.
We have got to provide the resources for the president's plan. If the resources are not there, it's going to be misery in the school systems. And I told this to the president personally. So it's no secret that I have these feelings.
But I could not, after that, see the direction of the budgetary process — and you know I stood up against that, and we succeeded in getting some $300 billion extra to spend. But it's not being directed under the budget process to education.
Q: Do you feel the president has not lived up to his campaign promises?
JEFFORDS: Well, I don't know — I don't ever remember specifically a promise to fund. He gave us a promise to get us new direction in education. But new direction without funding is really no useful direction at all.
Q: Senator, much has been made of the way the Bush White House and the Republican leadership in Congress have treated you. Has their treatment--personal treatment of you had anything to do with your decision?
JEFFORDS: Oh, nothing whatsoever. It gets laughable at times, and you get upset with it — like Vermont, the national school teacher, those kind of things. But that had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
Q: When did you make your decision?
JEFFORDS: I'm sorry?
Q: When did you make your decision?
JEFFORDS: I made my decision yesterday on the way down, really. And I'll tell you why — why did you wait that long? I promised my moderates. I met with the moderates yesterday, and it was the most emotional time that I have ever had in my life, with my closest friends urging me not to do what I was going to do because it affected their lives very substantially.
I know, for instance, the chairman of the Finance Committee has dreamed all his life of being chairman. He's chairman a couple of weeks, and now he will be no longer the chairman.
All the way down the line, I could see the anguish and the disappointment as I talked. So I told them I would not make my final decision until I had time on the way to Vermont to decide, and I did leave it open. But I could not justify not going forward.
(UNKNOWN): Last question.
Q: Senator, last week, the chairman of the Vermont Republican Party said he'd be terribly surprised if the idea of leaving the party had even crossed your mind. What have you done today to Republican leaders (OFF-MIKE)?
JEFFORDS: I've communicated with them, either I or my staff have. I've had conversations with them on the phone to make sure they understood what I was doing and why I was doing it.
STAFF: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Jeffords the Humble Patriot
Some of us do not trust his motives.
May 25, 2001 2:05 p.m.
You need only know Jim Jeffords to trust his motives, I've heard it said (three times) in 24 hours. This gives a little advantage to those who don't know Jim Jeffords, because some of us do not trust his motives. If he is trying to cast himself as an Emersonian individualist, he fails. "Jeffords, and Fellow Vermonters, Emphasize Tradition" was one headline. Individualists care naught for tradition, they care for their conscience. Most of us believe in the supremacy of conscience but the question before the house, if inquiring about the purity of Mr. Jeffords's motives, is: What was it that triggered this geological shift in conscience?
In his statement on Thursday he reported that he had "serious, substantive reservations about the budget" and that he anticipated disagreeing with the president on "very fundamental issues — the issues of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment and — "And? And what on earth else? Whippoorwills? "and a host of other issues, large and small."
Anyone who has served as a Republican congressman and then senator for 27 years has had plenty of time to get the swing of things under the GOP banner. True, under President Clinton, Jeffords voted 75 percent of the time on the Clinton side of divided issues. But that long endurance as a member of the Republican party would have given him, one assumes, time enough to discover irreconcilable institutional differences some time before May 24, 2001. What was it that so suddenly pushed him over the brink?
His followers tell us that he is not a trivial man. Therefore we must rule out the failure of the White House to invite him to tea when a fellow Vermonter got an award as the catalytic agent of his disaffection. He was reputedly annoyed by his exclusion, but surely big men don't let an annoyance engender a political revolution.
He didn't agree with the budget. But the tax-cut part of the budget was reduced from the $1.6 trillion Mr. Bush campaigned for over a period of six months. That reduction, to $1.35 trillion, was in part the doing of Mr. Jeffords himself, which substantiates that he was having an influence of his own on GOP policy. Why didn't he complain last November that the budget was a sundering difference between him and Mr. Bush?
Differences on the judiciary? So Mr. Bush opposes abortion — but unlike Bill Clinton, has never said he would be governed in his nominations to the judiciary only by solidarity on that subject. Missile defense became a national objective 18 years ago under Reagan. Clinton backed the idea, though not expansively. How was Jim Jeffords affronted by the White House's proceeding with a policy for which Mr. Bush had fought as a national candidate? What is it about Bush's energy policy that explains a dissolution of lifelong party ties to the GOP? And — before we forget — just what are the "host of other issues, large and small" which made continued life as a Republican unthinkable for him?
What is dishonorable about the event is the clear exercise of what I dub the "skyjacker's leverage." One man pulling out a pistol in a crowded airplane. You don't argue with what he tells the pilot.
What Mr. Jeffords did, holding the one critical vote, was an act of consummate democratic infidelity. It is one thing to cross the aisle to plead your case for association with the other political party, building that case and aiming to seek validation in a general election. Jeffords didn't do that. He coasted along as a Republican without any significant complaint before, during, and after Bush was nominated and elected.
Then the histrionic challenge loomed up. Whee!! Jim Jeffords has the power to reorient the entire political composition of the United States Senate, with changes in the leadership of committees that preside over health, defense, human services, and justice. A man of greater moral responsibility would have declined self-gratification of this kind, submitting his case to deliberative democratic processes; giving his own constituents an opportunity to weigh his case, and others their case; and, indeed, the president, his.
But the story told us nothing more than that to some people temptations are, if not irresistible, irresistible to the second-class among them. "Those who don't know me may have thought I enjoyed the limelight," he said in his press conference. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
Jim Jeffords just hates the limelight, but good brave loyal soldier that he is, he'll just put up with it, in the service of his ego.
Jeffords’s False Parallel
“Sen. Jeffords, you’re no Calvin Coolidge.”By Lawrence W. Reed & David Bardallis. Mr. Reed is president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Mr. Bardallis is the Mackinac Center’s managing editor of publications.
May 25, 2001 9:05 a.m.In announcing his defection from the Republican party, Vermont Sen. James Jeffords invoked the names of previous Vermont politicians, including that of former President Calvin Coolidge, to justify his change to independent status.
Jeffords, who fought against President Bush's tax cuts, has less in common with his fellow Vermonter Coolidge than he does with another Republican senator who bucked his party and president to oppose tax cuts. That senator was Michigan's James Couzens, who held office from 1922-1936.
The similarities between Jeffords and Couzens are striking. Couzens was a maverick Republican who fought the tax-cutting, fiscally prudent policies of Republican presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Like Jeffords, he was more often allied with "progressives" who pushed for greater government spending and involvement in the economy. Though wealthy himself, Couzens often employed class-warfare rhetoric as an advocate of "soak-the-rich" tax policies, and his principal nemesis was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.
When Mellon came to Washington in 1921, the top federal income-tax bracket was 73 percent. Confiscatory levies were putting scarce capital to flight as investors sought refuge abroad or in tax havens at home. Arguing that taxes had to be lowered "to attract the large fortunes back into productive enterprise," Mellon noted that "more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates" — a notion most recently confirmed again with the 1997 cut in the capital-gains tax rate.
With the full support of President Coolidge, who had assumed office upon Harding's death in 1923, Mellon pressured Congress and by 1929, when legislators passed his sixth tax cut of the decade, the top rate had been slashed from 73 to 24 percent. Those in the lowest income bracket (earning under $4,000 annually) saw their rates fall by an even greater percentage — from 4 percent to one-half of one percent.
Where was James Couzens in the debates over the Coolidge-Mellon tax cuts? Like Jeffords, squarely on the wrong side, opposing them at every turn and painting dire pictures of a hemorrhaging treasury. But personal income tax receipts for 1929 were over $1 billion, in contrast to the $719 million raised in 1921, when tax rates were far higher. The economy grew by 59 percent in that period, America was awash in new inventions, and American wages became the envy of the world.
Simultaneously, with no help from Couzens, Coolidge and Mellon were constraining the spending side of government. In 1928, total expenditures were actually a shade lower than they had been in 1923. It's safe to say that Jeffords's support for more federal spending — notably in education--has not been of great help to those who would hold the budgetary line today.
Ultimately, Couzens's opposition to his party's fiscal agenda also brought an end to his career as a Republican. He was denied renomination in 1936, and died in October of that same year.
Though Jeffords grudgingly mustered the good sense to vote for the $1.35-trillion tax cut compromise that passed the Senate, his unrelenting efforts to water down President Bush's already modest relief package hardly qualify him as a great friend of the taxpayer.
If being "independent" means being unable to support anything but the most meager of tax cuts in an era of federal surpluses, then Jeffords is right to go his own way. Meanwhile, we can only hope that more of the senator's colleagues will depend upon sound fiscal policy and press for larger tax cuts to revive a flagging economy and relieve the overburdened American people.
The Case for Jeffords-Bashing
In moderation.By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
May 25, 2001 3:20 p.m.The conservative press is throwing a hissy fit over Jim Jeffords…. [T]he level of vitriol is such that the soft-spoken 67-year-old is being treated like Saddam Hussein," writes media critic Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. This is perhaps not the sort of rhetoric one ought to use when suggesting that other writers are guilty of hyperbole and hostility. Most conservatives we know have had mixed reactions to Jeffords's departure from the Republican party: on the one hand, regret that his move gives liberals more power in the Senate; on the other hand, recognition that Jeffords didn't really fit well in the GOP and hope that there are some silver linings to the new configuration of power.
Some partisan anger is only natural in these situations. Liberal journalists weren't exactly the voice of sweet reason in responding to Ralph Nader's campaign last year. But we suspect that a lot of the anger among conservatives has less to do with the brute fact of Jeffords's leaving than with the patent phoniness of his explanation for it.
Jeffords suddenly discovered that he was in a conservative party? Yesterday, Jeffords said that one reason he had to leave was that he was going to have more and more conflicts with President Bush. That didn't stop him from being a Republican under President Reagan, with whom he disagreed more often than he agreed.
Supposedly the top issue that gave him discomfort with Republicans was education: Too many of them measure success, he said, by how many kids they can get out of public schools. (That's a caricature of the conservative position of course, but when it comes to getting kids out of rotten schools into ones that teach them and keep them safe we'll plead guilty.) Jeffords said this during the same week that the House passed a bipartisan education bill containing no vouchers with 384 votes and President Bush's blessing. Yet Jeffords, who didn't leave the Republican party when its platform pledged to abolish the department of education, can no longer abide by conservative extremism? His cover story is impossible to square with his timing.
That timing makes Jeffords's switch seem either petty or self-interested. It doesn't shock the conscience when a politician does something self-interested or dresses up that self-interest in piety. But we will confess to a little annoyance when the establishment press treats such a politician as some kind of statesman. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran editorials taking Jeffords's self-presentation with the utmost seriousness.
The Post says that Jeffords's "short but powerful" lecture is full of lessons for Republicans. Contrast this coverage with that accorded to Sen. Richard Shelby when he left the Democrats for the Republicans after the 1994 election. Shelby got less coverage because he didn't cause control of the Senate to flip but what coverage he got was rationally cynical. The Post ran no editorial and the Times ran one titled, "Profiles in Opportunism." Shelby was treated fairly. Jeffords is being made into something more than he is.
That said, conservatives shouldn't — and haven't — let their anger at Jeffords and the press go unchecked. The reason is not that their anger is unwarranted but that it is unproductive. Serious, politically active conservatives will spend their time figuring out how to advance their agenda in the new circumstances — and, more important, how to change those circumstances in 2002. Don't get mad. Get organized.
Jewish World Review May 29, 2001 / 7 Sivan, 5761
John H. Fund
Integrity in Politics? Hardly. Jim Jeffords is no Wayne Morse
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- BEFORE Jim Jeffords, the most memorable senator to leave his party and become an independent was the irascible Wayne Morse of Oregon. Like Mr. Jeffords, Morse left the Republican Party, in January 1953, to protest its domination by conservatives. Ironically, Morse's was also the decisive vote that could have made or broken partisan control of the Senate. But he handled his leverage very differently, and, in a word, honorably.In July 1953, Senate Majority Leader Robert Taft--"Mr. Republican"--died unexpectedly, and his successor was named by a Democratic governor. Suddenly, the Democrats had a 48-47 edge in the Senate. But Morse continued to vote for a GOP majority leader because he said it would be dishonorable for him to hand over control to Democrats having been elected as a Republican. With Vice President Richard Nixon casting a tie-breaking vote, Republicans retained control for the next 18 months.
Morse remained an independent throughout that time until the 1954 elections delivered firm control of the Senate to Democrats, whereupon he became a Democrat. He is best remembered for being one of only two senators to vote against the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which broadened the Vietnam War. A Wayne Morse Integrity in Politics award is given each year to a person who most exemplifies his legacy of "Principle Above Politics."
Somehow I doubt that Mr. Jeffords, who secured a promise that he would chair the key Environment and Public Works Committee before he agreed to vote with the Democrats, is putting principle above politics. Even some of his Vermont friends are questioning the way he is abandoning the Republican Party after winning a dozen elections since 1966 with its help.
Jeffrey Wennberg, a former mayor of Mr. Jeffords's hometown of Rutland, also worked on his congressional staff. In an interview, he said that he is mystified by Mr. Jeffords's explanation for his party shift. "Jim backed Bush last year in the primaries and general election knowing he was a conservative," he says. "Now Bush as president isn't doing anything he didn't campaign on." He believes that Mr. Jeffords should resign and seek a new mandate. "I can understand why people would feel betrayed if he did otherwise," he says. "It's not healthy for the democratic process if voters aren't asked."
Richard Mallary, who was Mr. Jeffords's immediate predecessor in the House in the early 1970s, anticipated Mr. Jeffords's defection last year when he left the Republicans to run unsuccessfully for the Legislature as an independent. Mr. Mallary agrees with Mr. Jeffords that Republicans have become too conservative. But he said that when voters went to the polls, they voted for a Republican who would back his party's leadership. "It was sort of an implied commitment to vote with the Republicans to organize the Senate," he told the Rutland Herald. If Mr. Jeffords honestly feels he can't keep that commitment, then Mr. Mallary says he has an obligation to resign and run for re-election under a new banner.
Most party switchers don't do that, of course, but there is a conspicuous exception. When Phil Gramm left the Democrats in 1983, he resigned his House seat and won a snap election as a newly minted Republican. Sen. Zell Miller (D., Ga.), himself the object of much pressure to switch parties, has said he admired the way Mr. Gramm handled his switch. He has hinted that he might follow the same course if he becomes fed up with Democrats who criticize his support of some of President Bush's initiatives.
It's not surprising that Mr. Jeffords appears to be in no mood to seek a new mandate. Since he need not face the voters again until 2006, it's possible that, at age 67, he is serving his last term and will never stand for election again. Mr. Jeffords may have changed history by turning the Senate upside down, but the manner in which he did it is unlikely to make him a candidate for the Wayne Morse Integrity in Politics award.
The senator, clearly, is no Wayne Morse.
Jewish World Review May 29, 2001 / 7 Sivan, 5761
Jonah Goldberg
Jeffords is slandering his former colleagues for reasons that have remarkably little to do with principle
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IN one episode of "The Simpsons" the town's evil billionaire, Monty Burns, runs for governor. When the Simpsons inadvertently ruin Burns' campaign, he turns to his aide-de-camp and declares, "Smithers! This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you."
Well, that's pretty much the sentiment among Republicans across Washington this week. Vermont Senator James Jeffords has declared he's no longer a Republican, a move that will effectively hand the keys to the best bathroom in the Senate to Democrat Tom Daschle, by making him Senate Majority Leader.
The mellower Republicans want to beat Jeffords about the head and neck with a semi-frozen flounder. For example, during his press conference, Jeffords admitted that the current chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley, "dreamed all his life of being chairman. He's chairman a couple of weeks, and now he will be no longer the chairman."
OK, I admit, it takes a very strange person to say as a small child, "Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee." Still, a dream's a dream, and by tipping the balance of power to the Democrats, Jeffords snatched Grassley's away from him. And, yet, if Grassley were to, well, you know, Grassley would be the one to go to jail.
Alas, Jeffords is squashing the dreams of many people, including any of his staffers who had planned long careers in the Republican Party or hoped to keep playing in the GOP softball league. All Senate committees will be Democrat-chaired and run. All of President Bush's court picks will now have to stand on one leg, pat their heads and rub their bellies while singing the alphabet backward, just so they can schedule a confirmation hearing.
For the first four months of his presidency, Bush could phone Trent Lott, the Republican leader in the Senate, and say, "Trent, baby, you have strange hair." Well, he can still say that. But he also used to be able to say, "Here's what we're going to do tomorrow." And he can't say that anymore. Bush now has to ask, "So, what do you think they're going to do tomorrow?" That's a huge difference.
What rankles the Republicans I've talked to is the pettiness of Jeffords' rationale for leaving. The Vermont Senator denies he's changing parties because of various alleged White House snubs, such as his not being invited to a teacher of the year ceremony at the Rose Garden. But his stated reasons don't make him seem any more principled.
First, Jeffords says he's leaving the GOP on principle, but at the same time he was unwilling to make the change unless Democrats promised him a chairmanship. Some principle.
Even more annoying is his claim that he feels the increasingly conservative GOP has no room for moderates like him.
"I find myself in disagreement with my party. I understand that many people are more conservative than I am. … It has become a struggle for our leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them," Jeffords said.
This is plausible, until you hear his only example of an oppressively conservative party. Jeffords says his "largest" disagreement with the administration is the current Bush education plan. If Jeffords had said he was leaving the party because vests don't have sleeves, he couldn't have sounded more absurd.
To call the Bush administration's education sell-out anything but a complete fire sale would be too generous. Not only has the White House abandoned vouchers, Bush has dropped his commitment to local control of schools and tripled spending on bilingual education (which is primarily supported by liberal activists).
Indeed, the day Jeffords blamed Bush's education plan, columnist Robert Novak reported that even Bush's own, liberal, education secretary doesn't like the current bill because it gives too much away.
Personally, I'm not too dismayed that Jeffords is leaving the GOP; I think liberals belong with the liberal party and conservatives with the conservative party. But by switching teams now - six months after being elected as a Republican, running partly on the Bush agenda - and by claiming the GOP is more hostile to moderates today than it was when he campaigned, Jeffords is slandering his former colleagues for reasons that have remarkably little to do with principle. And he's squashing their dreams in the process.
JEFFORDS SHOULD
FREEZE IN ALASKABy STEVE DUNLEAVY
May 28, 2001
IN THE coming months, as Californians eat their tofu by candlelight and the energy police tell Barbra Streisand to turn out lights in her castle, I pray for one thing.
And that is that Jim "Judas" Jeffords goes to the wilderness of Alaska, camps out, freezes his rear end off, hugs a tree and plays catch with a polar bear.
Jeffords, as reward for sabotaging last year's Electoral College result, has been gifted by the Democrats to head the Senate committee on the environment.
And as if to underscore that drilling for critically needed oil in the Alaskan wilderness is dead, Sen. Tom Daschle (S.D.), who will become Senate majority leader June 5, knows what his Valachi friend Jeffords will do in his new bribe job.
Is drilling in Alaska dead? Daschle was asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday.
"Yes," he replied. "Finished."
How well Daschle knows the result of that bribe to Jeffords, his surrogate. Drilling in Alaska is dead.
With the demand for domestic oil production growing at a frightening pace - 62 percent more in the next half generation - Daschle and Jeffords will have ample time to explain:
* Why, with our continued reliance on mostly Arab oil, we will be blackmailed into softening our support for Israel.
* How to convince parents in The Bronx, who can't afford higher oil costs, that their babies are not really sweating or freezing in their beds, depending on the season.
* What to do when gasoline prices hit $3 a gallon. Ride horses?
To answer these points, the first words out of the mouths of Daschle and Jeffords, who represent the interests of millionaire trial lawyers and members of indolent teachers unions, is "conservation."
We would have to conserve 62 percent of our present usage of energy in the future to keep up with the present low voltage.
Don't think that California's energy crisis won't be here in our homes and cars in a skinny minute.
I love the way Daschle and new buddy Jeffords never stop talking about "bipartisanship," which is about as foreign to those guys as Urdu.
"Consider the source," says my social scientist, Eddie Kavanah, of their bipartisanship pledge.
"They don't speak even political double-talk, just outright lies."
Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), from Daschle's own party, said yesterday: "We were far too shrill as a minority, and we're less concerned about getting along than getting even."
"Well," Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Brit Hume on "Fox News Sunday," "they [the Democratic majority] will not be able to obstruct without being accountable."
Since when has Daschle ever been accountable? He changes his position like he changes his socks.
As for Jeffords, running as a Republican last year in Vermont, his campaign slogan was, "I'm a Republican who gets things done." Well, I can't wait for him to get things done.
I can't wait for him to go to Alaska, hug a tree, play catch with a polar bear and explain why his eco-holism reduces our economy to that of a Third World country.
Of course, like all rats, he could in the future ask to be admitted to the witness-protection program.
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Copyright 2001 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.Jeffords' Calculated Defection
Townhall.com Columnists
Robert Novak (archive)
May 28, 2001WASHINGTON -- The puzzling question of why Sen. Jim Jeffords should suddenly decide that, after 25 years, life as a congressional Republican had become intolerable was answered for some GOP colleagues by Sen. Strom Thurmond's appearance Monday night. He looked every bit of his 98 years, prompting speculation of whether he might not survive the ordeal of roll call votes on the tax bill extending far into the night.
The demise of Thurmond would have instantly turned the evenly divided Senate over to the Democrats. Jeffords crossing the aisle then would have been interesting but hardly the cosmic event of last week. As the 52nd rather than the 51st vote in the Democratic caucus, Jeffords would have lost his bargaining leverage that is enabling him to continue among the Senate's elite as a standing committee chairman.
Until the eleventh hour, Jeffords kept his prolonged negotiations with Democrats secret from his closest Republican colleagues. His dramatic announcement visit to Vermont was laid on after his deal with the Democrats showed signs of coming undone. Intentionally or not, he misled Senate Republican friends into hoping for a late change of heart.
Belying Jeffords's contention that it is harder for a liberal to endure in the GOP when the president is a conservative Republican, he began exploring his options with Democratic leaders last year when Bill Clinton was still in the White House. With the Senate divided 50-50 after the 2000 election, Jeffords stepped up talks with Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and Democratic Whip Harry Reid.
In the gossipy Senate, not a word leaked to Republicans. Jeffords lunched weekly with Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine but said nothing. Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a relatively conservative friend and supporter, last Tuesday morning discounted rumors about Jeffords defecting.
The GOP first learned the truth Tuesday afternoon. A Republican senator overheard Jeffords telling a Democratic colleague he would be going to the White House that day to inform the president he would cross the aisle and announce his intentions in Washington Wednesday morning.
However, the deal Jeffords had secretly cut to make him Environment Committee chairman seemed to be falling apart. According to Senate sources, Sen. Robert Byrd, graybeard of the Senate Democrats and a stickler for precedent, did not like it. At that point, Jeffords postponed his announcement until Thursday morning in Vermont, and agreed to meet with Republican colleagues late Wednesday.
The meeting was drenched with emotion. Tears rolled down the cheeks of Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee chairman. Sen. Pete Domenici, the Budget chairman, cried a little too. Jeffords never mentioned supposed slights by the Bush White House but claimed not getting his way on education funds for the disabled in April was the last straw. In fact, Jeffords reneged on a $150 billion, 10-year agreement after being convinced by staff that he should ask for more.
Participants passed the word that it was a "good meeting," and that Jeffords would ponder his decision in the quiet of Vermont for another two days. Thus, old Senate friends were stunned when the next morning in Burlington, he unilaterally tilted the capital's balance of power.
As a Republican representing a very liberal state, Jim Jeffords always has been in closer step with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy than the GOP. His vote on the Foreign Relations Committee in 1991 enabled Democrats to launch their later discredited investigation of charges that an "October surprise" fixed the 1980 election for Ronald Reagan by delaying release of the Iranian hostages.
Still, when Jeffords was terrified that independent socialist Rep. Bernard Sanders might challenge and defeat him in 2000, the liberal senator went to Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott. The result was passage of the Northeast dairy compact and a refundable children's tax credit engineered by Lott, who earlier had saved the Education Committee chairmanship for Jeffords. Sanders did not run, and Jeffords was re-elected easily.
Things were different this year. Republican term limits would end his reign at Education after 2002. The 50-50 Senate gave Jeffords infinite bargaining strength, so long as an act of God did not give the Democrats the Senate majority too soon. Jeffords had to act quickly, and he did.
©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
Jeffords rewarded with chairmanship
Audrey Husdon
THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished 7/11/01
Sen. James M. Jeffords was rewarded yesterday with a committee chairmanship and other key panel assignments for switching parties and giving Democrats control of the Senate.
June 6 switch of the Vermont Republican to independent gave Democrats committee chairmanships plus a one-seat advantage on committees, but those assignments were not formalized until yesterday by the Democratic caucus.
Jeffords emerged from the shake-up a clear winner, with chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee plus a seat on two additional A-list committees and two B-list committees. As chairman of the committee overseeing environmental issues, Mr. Jeffords said he will focus on Clean Air Act reform and a review of the Superfund law.
I'll make sure that we continue our strong commitment to federal transportation projects and I pledge to bring Vermont's environmental ethic to the forefront of national policy," Mr. Jeffords said.
Mr. Jeffords cited disagreements with President Bush and the Republican Party in announcing his party switch, and some Capitol Hill Republicans express concern he will use his committee chairmanship to lob tough, environmental-issue bombs at the White House. While Mr. Bush's job-approval rating remains high, his poll numbers on environmental issues continue to sag.
"There's always the danger of politicizing environmental issues, and the Democrats do very well at it sometimes," said Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican and former committee chairman.
"Hopefully, we can work on policy matters and work together." The committee includes several Republicans who often cross party lines on environmental issues, giving Democrats an extra boost to bring up thorny issues.
"The committee is not going to be doing any favors for the administration, I can assure you of that," said Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.
Mr. Jeffords also retained his position on the Finance Committee. In addition, Mr. Jeffords will continue to serve on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee he once chaired, Veterans' Affairs Committee and as a member on the Special Committee on Aging.
"Wow, it looks like Jeffords is getting all kinds of goodies," said one Republican aide after the announcement.
"He did very well in negotiating his terms to the Democrats, and has been rewarded handsomely for his switch," the aide said.
Mr. Jeffords is the first independent or third-party senator to be chairman of a committee since Henrik Shipstead, Printing Committee chairman, in 1933.
Other committee chairmanships were assigned as expected to the ranking Democrat members. Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, was next in line to head the environmental committee but sacrificed the position for Democratic control of the Senate. Mr. Reid will instead be chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics, a B-list assignment.
The only notable committee assignment was Sen. John Edwards, who now has a seat on the Judiciary Committee. The North Carolina Democrat is looking at a presidential run in 2004, and the assignment gives him the platform to oppose Mr. Bush's conservative judicial nominees and build his Democratic base.
Mr. Edwards is already threatening to "blue slip" or veto the nomination of Terrence Boyle, a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican.Copyright © 2001 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Democrats Celebrate Jeffords' Switch
Sat May 25,11:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats celebrated the one-year anniversary of Sen. Jim Jeffords' defection from the Republican Party that broke a 50-50 Senate tie and gave them control of the chamber.
In the Democratic radio address aired Saturday, Sen. Robert Torricelli (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., said Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, showed moral courage that is vital to democracy.
"He was willing to risk his career, friendships and relationships in act of great courage," Torricelli said. "The difference could not be more profound."
A "coup of one," Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said after Jeffords left the GOP. "The decision of one man has, however else you describe it, trumped the will of the American people," the Mississippi lawmaker said.
In an interview this week, Jeffords said he acted to curb the GOP's conservative grip on power. With the White House, a House majority and the levers of power in the Senate, he said, "it resulted in Republicans acting as if they had the absolute power to do what they wanted. ... And I felt strongly that you had to have some moderation."
Torricelli said the history of the Senate was altered by Jeffords' decision.
"A new Democratic Senate allows for a patient's bill of rights so that doctors and patients will make medical decisions and not insurance company bureaucrats," Torricelli said.
"A Democratic Senate prevents Republicans from privatizing Social Security (news - web sites) so that no American has to live with doubt about their retirement."
Republicans agree the Democrats are having an impact, but they characterize it differently.
"They are obstructionists," Lott said recently. "They are doing everything they can to slow-walk or delay the president's agenda."
Torricelli said Jeffords is a fitting Memorial Day example of courage.
"Not every American will have the chance Senator Jeffords did to so profoundly affect the agenda of our country and the lives of so many working families," he said. "But every American has the opportunity to exercise moral courage and join the fight to improve their neighbors' lives."
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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