What Jeffords got, a year after switch

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | May 24, 2002 edition | By Gail Russell Chaddock

[vannrox]

from the May 24, 2002 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0524/p01s01-uspo.html

What Jeffords got, a year after switch

Vermont senator has little clout to show for his role in tipping Senate to Democrats.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords has lost that deer-in-the-headlights look that he wore like a uniform during his last days as a Republican. He looks relaxed. And he's more famous than he ever imagined possible.

"I had no idea what the response would be, not just here [in Washington], but worldwide," he says.

A year ago today, Senator Jeffords announced that he would be leaving the Republican Party – and handing control of the Senate back to Democrats. Presents started arriving from as far away as Australia. He got a standing ovation when he walked into a meeting of environmentalists in Florence, Italy, the next day.

But don't ask what happened to the big issues he cited as reasons for his historic defection.

The $1.3 trillion tax cut that he said would starve all other social priorities? It still passed, with 12 Democrats voting in favor.

Full federal funding for special education? The new masters of the Senate don't look any more able to find an added $180 billion in the budget over the next 10 years than the GOP was.

For all the hoopla and celebrity surrounding Jeffords' defection, he's a man who no longer has other senators worried about what concessions they may need to make to him. He chairs a committee, but has no big wins in his name. And with the White House and GOP leaders in the House and Senate against you, no big wins look likely in the future.

In his defense, Jeffords notes that his refusal (while still a Republican) to vote the original $1.6 trillion Bush tax cut forced the Senate to cut it to $1.3 trillion. That's $30 billion a year available for social programs, he says.

And he doesn't blame Democrats that special education isn't yet one of them. "At least for Democrats it's still a goal. The first thing Republicans want to do is to cut back on education," he says.

What Democrats are offering is esteem, a quality in short supply when he was on the GOP side of the aisle. This week, Daschle's office organized daily public events for Jeffords to celebrate his "commitment" on issues like Social Security, energy, and the environment. Jeffords returns the favor by campaigning for Democrats facing tight races in the fall.

Last weekend, he stumped in St. Louis for embattled Sen. Jean Carnahan.

Back in Vermont, he is as popular as ever, where he picks up about 2 of every 3 voters. "But so is President Bush," says Skip Vallee, the state's Republican National Committeeman.

Many Republicans still blame Jeffords, now Independent, for snatching away the only chance they've had to control the Congress with a Republican in the White House in anyone's lifetime.

Some in the GOP grumble that he did it for the gavel. Jeffords was running up against term limits for committee chairs. And as the senator dubbed "Bill Clinton's favorite politician" by wags in his own party, he was not sure to be offered another.

Senate Democrats have no term limits on committee chairs. Nor did they mind coming up with a chairmanship on the Environment and Public Works committee, good for as long as Democrats controlled the Senate.

There had been party switchers before – 17 in the US Senate since 1893 – but none at the price of control of the chamber. Sen. Wayne Morse (I) of Oregon nearly delivered the Senate to Democrats in 1953, but he delayed his party switch until after the 1954 elections, which produced the same outcome at the ballot box.

Ask Jeffords today why he left, and he gives pretty much the same answer he did on May 24, 2001, the day he made the history books: "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."

Last spring's budget and tax battles had been bruising. For Jeffords, who was bucking the president's tax cut, it meant putting up with summons to the woodshed, muttering, and gnashing of teeth. He didn't like it.

In his 2001 book, "My Declaration of Independence," he describes being called to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's hideaway on the third floor of the Capitol during the budget debate. He knew the room well. For the past five years, the (now defunct) Singing Senators – Jeffords, Mr. Lott, Larry Craig of Idaho, and John Ashcroft of Missouri – had practiced barbershop quartets in that room every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

But music was not on anyone's mind that night. The budget debate was on, and Jeffords was refusing to back the president's signature $1.6 trillion tax cut. And his vote looked decisive.

"We went back and forth, seeming at times to talk past one another," Jeffords writes. White House aides "spoke darkly of the future if I opposed the President."

Six months later, when Senate Democrats also failed to secure funding for special education, he told colleagues that he was "the most depressed" he had been since leaving the GOP.

In his last talk with Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle before the switch, Jeffords says that he asked for promises on two things: his staff and cows. He wanted the staff to find jobs in the new Senate, and New England dairy producers to retain the price supports that Republicans were threatening to dismantle.

A year later, the staff have jobs and Daschle persuaded Democrats to back a new system of price supports for dairy farmers.

But the biggest consequence of Jeffords' switch could be on an item he rarely mentioned: the shape of the federal judiciary. "Many around the White House thought they had a mandate to change the federal courts, even though they lost the popular vote. Now, that's impossible," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, who took over chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee after the Jeffords switch. Mr. Leahy has used that power to slow or block most White House judicial nominees.

Once-fellow GOP moderates have found some light in Jeffords' defection: They say GOP leaders treat them with more respect. "They're acutely aware that we need to be brought into the process, and it is happening," says Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine, a leading moderate and longtime Jeffords friend. "They're not just coming to us with a fait accompli and saying 'We need to have your vote.' "

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Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

[vannrox]

Yea... If it wasn't for Clinton Wyussing down our Civil Rights, this guy would of been Tarred and Feathered.

[beckett]

He actually brags about being a turncoat. That's what I find most sickening. And it's a measure of our general fall from standards of character as a society that such treachery --- an undemocratic coup d'etat in the upper house of Congress --- didn't cause much more of an uproar among the body politic.

[Billthedrill]

What Jeffords got:

The $1.3 trillion tax cut that he said would starve all other social priorities? It still passed, with 12 Democrats voting in favor.

Full federal funding for special education? The new masters of the Senate don't look any more able to find an added $180 billion in the budget over the next 10 years than the GOP was.

What Democrats are offering is esteem...

Selling out is dishonorable. Selling out cheap is pathetic.

[truth_seeker]

Ronald Reagan changed from Democrat to Republican. George Wallace changed from Democrat to American Independent. Pat Buchanan changed from Republican to Reform Party.

What's the Big Deal? People change parties. Get used to it.

[Mr. Lucky]

You'll recall that Benedict Arnold lived out his years in England a bitter, disrespected, pathetic loser of a man.

[Miss Marple]

The difference, as you well know, is that is also changed control of the Senate, making it possible for Daschle to onstruct programs and changing the chairmanship of all the committees. It also meant we cannot get many of the judiciary nominations passed.

You can think it's no big deal if you want. I do not, especially because he took Republican campaign money to get elected.

[Miss Marple]

onstruct = obstruct

[Henchster]

"Many around the White House thought they had a mandate to change the federal courts, even though they lost the popular vote. Now, that's impossible," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, who took over chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee after the Jeffords switch. Mr. Leahy has used that power to slow or block most White House judicial nominees.

Hey you partisan hack doofus Leahy, check this out:

DemonRats just can't let go of their inability to properly doctor the ballots in 2000. I hope this happens in November:

[Pres Raygun]

Jeffords changed parties less than a year after he was elected as a Republican using Republican money. None of the example you gave did anything like what Jeffords did. Tell the truth.

[PhiKapMom]

But none of the ones you mentioned were a United States Senator that was just re-elected and took money from a lot of Republicans for his re-election campaign including my Senator Nickles' PAC which he hit up for $10,000 and has never paid back. If he had resigned and become a RAT or said he was going to join the RATS after being elected, then I wouldn't be so disgusted with the lowlife Jeffords.

Taking Republican money for your re-election and then turning the Senate over to the RATS is not a little matter.

[Henchster]

Here's the difference, and the way it should be done. Here's an excerpt from Phil Gramm's (A former Dem turned Repub, the RIGHT way,) Presidential candidacy speech:

"As a Democrat member of the House, I authored the Reagan program. That program cut government spending, cut taxes and ignited the longest peacetime expansion in American history, an expansion that created 20 million new jobs. That budget rebuilt defense and set in place the cornerstone of a policy of peace through strength that won the Cold War and tore down the Berlin Wall and liberated Eastern Europe and changed the world.

Now, America and the people of my district were happy about that leadership, but Tip O'Neill and the Democrat bosses in the House hated it. So they took me off the Budget Committee. I felt the people of my district were being disenfranchised. But I'd been elected as a Democrat, and I felt if I simply changed parties and stayed in the Congress, something I had every right to do, that there might be some people who would feel betrayed. So against the best political advice, including the urging of my dear friend Lee Atwater, I resigned from the Congress, came back home and ran again as a Republican. No Republican had ever gotten more than a third of the vote in my district. But on Lincoln's birthday, February the 12th, 1983, I defeated 10 Democrats and I went back to Washington to finish the job."

[madrastex]

Amen!

[Pres Raygun]

Thank you.

[Miss Marple]

Well, hi-ho, Mr. Been Here One Whole Week! What's the matter, couldn't stand to lurk until a more appropriate time!

Gramm went back and RAN as a Republican, as has been demonstrated above. Thurmond switched years ago and has RUN as a Republican ever since. Shelby and Campbell switched while in office, but their switches were made when the Republicans were the majority, and their switches did NOT change the leadership nor the committee chairmanships.

Go right ahead and stick up for Jeffords. You reveal yourself for what you are, and that certainly isn't a conservative or a Republican.

[timydnuc]

I'm going to do my Senate math and predictions:

Now....R=49...RAT=50....I=1

Best case after Nov.:

Minnesota +1 R=50, RAT=49, I=1

South Dakota, +1 R=51, RAT=48, I=1

Missouri, +1 R=52, RAT=47, I=1

Leaving R=52, RAT=47, I=1

Chaffey switches to I, making it R=51, RAT=47, I=2 (Even if he goes RAT it's still R=51, RAT=49, I=1)

McLame finally outs himself as a true socialist and switches to the RATS leaving R=50, RATS=49, I=2 (Or R=50, RATS=49, I=1, depending on what Caffee does, and he will do it!) If Jumpin' Jim decided to make it official, I'm a socialist and proud of it, that makes R=50, RAT=50, but we got thundering Dick Cheney!

It's a win/win scenerio! We get rid of Chaffee, and McLame, they ruin they political futures, and we get back the senate...bada bing, bada bang, bada boom!

My evaluation! Hit me with your best shot.

[Sub-Driver]

and bad press for being so ego-centric

[Miss Marple]

From your lips to God's ears!

[timydnuc]

Addendum and correction to math. McLame switches to RATS making it R=50, RATS=49, I=1. Sorry, but you guys could have figured it out all by yourself. I just didn't want to come of a stupid in math. I never could do story problems!

[VOA]

You'll recall that Benedict Arnold lived out his years in England a bitter, disrespected,
pathetic loser of a man.

Seeing how today's history teachers do such a poor job, I make sure to say this
when a Judas-figure comes up in conversation:
"S/He isn't just a Benedict Arnold....s/he's a real Jeffords!"

This way two great masters of perfidy get their due recognition