Jim Jeffords:
RINO OF THE YEAR!
Posted on 12/29/2001 8:52:48 AM PST by holman
Seven months after Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party and altered the balance of power in Washington, he remains something of an icon. Consider the recent book-signing Jeffords held at a Borders in downtown Washington to celebrate the publication of his triumphant My Declaration of Independence. One after another, Jeffords's beaming fans called him a hero and an inspiration, and asked to snap his picture. A starry-eyed blonde showed up with ten copies of his book. After signing the whole stack, Jeffords kissed her hand. "I'll remember that!" she exclaimed, wandering off with a giddy smile.
The national media has been equally charmed. In just a week of December television appearances, Vermont's junior senator was celebrated by Mike Wallace, Katie Couric, and Larry King. "I salute you," King told Jeffords. Couric, echoing a familiar refrain, described Jeffords as "a man at peace" with his decision. On "60 Minutes," Jeffords declared, "I've never felt better about myself."
You might think Jeffords hasn't a care in the world. Not only is he a media star, but his new Democratic allies supposedly value him in a way the Republicans never did. Didn't the number-two Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, give up a precious committee chairmanship to Jeffords back in the spring? Doesn't Tom Daschle, who became Senate majority leader thanks to Jeffords's switch, routinely joke in public that he's just come back from "mowing Jim Jeffords's lawn"? One almost imagines the squinty-eyed Vermonter reclining on a chaise somewhere, as powerful Democrats pop grapes into his mouth and fan him with palm fronds.
The reality is rather different. For all the public appreciation, Jeffords is no more influential now than he was as a Republican--in fact, he may be less so. He has already witnessed the primary cause for which he left the GOP go down in defeat. And a second pet issue is also in serious peril. Gone is the power he once had to extort concessions from Republican leaders fearful of losing his vote; those leaders now despise and shun him. Worse, his Democratic friends may be starting to take him for granted. Indeed, in a recent meeting of House and Senate Democrats, he pronounced himself "the most depressed I have felt" since switching parties.
The single issue most responsible for Jim Jeffords's defection from the GOP was special education--specifically his belief that Republicans weren't spending enough on it. Jeffords has a deep personal investment in the issue: He was one of the principal authors of Congress's 1975 law setting special-education policy for the country. In April, Jeffords briefly managed to help whittle down President Bush's tax cut and add $200 billion in special-ed funding. But when he learned that the final Bush budget plan offered no new education spending at all, Jeffords says, he knew he had to bid the GOP farewell.
But if Jeffords had hoped that aligning himself with the Democrats would achieve his goal, he was mistaken. Special-ed funding came up again during the long negotiations this fall over Congress's sweeping new education bill. After months of haggling, by mid-December House and Senate leaders and the White House had finally reached agreement on nearly every intricate detail of the bill. The only issue left to resolve was special education. Jeffords, with the support of a few liberal Democrats, insisted on the $200 billion he'd failed to get in the Bush budget. But House Republicans--who were both opposed on the merits and eager to punish Jeffords--wouldn't compromise. Jeffords implored his Democratic colleagues to fight, even if it meant stalling the entire bill indefinitely. He even dropped what some took to be not-too-subtle hints, reminding people that he had left the GOP over this very issue. (And for an afternoon, a few senators actually wondered if he could possibly do the unthinkable--switch back.) But in the end, it was no use. The lead Democratic negotiators, Representative George Miller and Senator Ted Kennedy, with Daschle's support, refused to make a Tora Bora-style stand with Jeffords. Fearing it would be political suicide to derail the bill, the Dems instead promised to revisit funding for special ed next year.
Jeffords's only recourse was to cast a protest vote against the conference report, and to vent his frustration in a New York Times op-ed last week: "I am outraged," he wrote, "that a majority of my colleagues on the conference committee"-- a number that included several Democrats--"voted not to include this [special-education] amendment." But some Democrats have told Jeffords that he has only himself to blame. Despite his disgust with the Bush tax cut, he did vote for it, after all--and intentionally delayed his defection until after it was signed into law. "There's a reason there's no money for [special education]," says one Democrat close to the education talks. "It was the tax bill."
Meanwhile, Jeffords is also encountering trouble on his second-most prized issue: the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact. The compact, which pays tens of millions in subsidies to Vermont farmers, expired on September 30, and its fate is uncertain. When Jeffords was still a Republican, he managed to keep the compact alive, in part by claiming it was essential to his reelection--and thus to maintaining the GOP Senate majority. Back then, says conservative activist Grover Norquist, "a whole bunch of Republicans were willing to hold their noses and give Jeffords the stupid subsidy." No longer. Now Senate Republicans like Trent Lott, who lost his majority leader post when Jeffords switched, have sworn to block any effort by Daschle to reward the traitor. Indeed, one lobbyist recalls seeing Lott at a Washington dinner this summer and asking about the dairy compact. "His eyes were on fire," the lobbyist recounts. "He grabbed me by the arm and said, `I will never, ever let Jim Jeffords forget what he did to me.'"
Jeffords's problem is that Democratic leaders don't feel nearly as much passion on his behalf. On his own, Daschle might give Jeffords his compact, but Midwestern senators who think it provides New England farmers an unfair advantage are pressuring him not to. Daschle may also be nervous about how the compact plays in his home state of South Dakota. "Tom Daschle always says that he represents South Dakota first and is the Democratic leader second," says Norquist, an avowed compact foe. How, Norquist asks, would it look to South Dakota's farmers if Daschle acted against his state's interests in order to reward "some bozo from Vermont"?
That's not to say Democrats haven't tried at all. When Republicans tried to limit farm spending earlier this year, Reid told them that Democrats would scale back their funding demands in exchange for a six-month extension of the compact. Republicans refused. Now Daschle is trying to finesse the issue with a compromise plan that would give $2 billion in subsidies to dairy farmers throughout the country--thereby buying off senators from all regions--over the next three years. One Senate agriculture aide describes that plan, for which Daschle personally twisted arms on the Senate floor last week, as "a little payback" for Jeffords. But it's just a temporary fix--and if that's all he gets, Jeffords says, he'll be disappointed. Again.
Jeffords insists he has at least achieved one political goal: empowering Republican moderates. "I put the moderates back in business, and that alone has made a huge difference," he told Roll Call this month. But where's the evidence for that? Yes, Lott created a leadership slot for moderate Senator Arlen Specter after Jeffords's defection, but the Senate Republican agenda shows no signs of enlightenment. And GOP leaders in the House--who are on the verge of promoting Tom DeLay to Majority Leader--haven't even made a pretense of listening to their moderates. If anything, hard-liners in both parties wield even more control following Jeffords's switch, since Daschle's Democrats can now wage a fiercer fight against Bush's domestic agenda.
To be sure, Jeffords still knows how to hold out for a good deal now and again. When Senate Democrats were writing their economic stimulus bill this fall, Jeffords--the swing vote needed to pass it out of the Senate Finance Committee--demanded that some $4 billion be shifted from health care to dubious "agricultural stimulus" programs in exchange for his vote. But that's probably less than he would have gotten had he stayed in the GOP. After all, threatening to switch parties is a powerful negotiating tool--but it vanishes as soon as you actually switch. In fact, the more Jeffords loses, the more he falls back on rhetoric about how he "had to be true to what I thought was right, and leave the consequences to sort themselves out." Unfortunately for him, those consequences haven't quite turned out the way he hoped.
Why is the Federal Government even IN these areas?
Aside from Jeffords nitwittery, payback and a Just God . . . what's it gonna take to cinch back this centralized governance to only the narrow list of responsibilities set forth by the Framers?
Initiative and Referendum is what we need to scythe away vast chunks of bloated bureaucracy, beginning with all the regulatory acts. Then, only the activist courts will remain as the last defense of the Left.
Here's your guide to bias. Moving to the left is described as being "enlightened."
I hope Jeffords gets absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. I hope he looks back on his defection as the biggest mistake in his life.
I don't know which would make me more angry, the fact that the Reps wouldn't take him back and stay in the minority, or the fact that they would take him back just to regain the majority.
What a b*st*rd, I wish him ill.
I am satisfied for now that Senator Jeffords is not reaping the rewards of his treachery, however, I will never consider his come-uppance complete until he has lost his seat over this.
Icon? Moron is more like it.
Pray for GW and the Truth!
Well, there's always Prozac.
Senator's are even thinking the UNTHINKABLE....he switches back to Republican..........hahahahahahahha!!!
Trent LOTT !!!?
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