Land of Lincoln no more

Here in New England the "moderate Republican," once a fairly common creature, is now perilously close to extinction. From today's Providence Journal:

PROVIDENCE — Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party.

Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment.

“It’s not my party any more,” he said.

Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.

When some friends of Lincoln Chafee suggested to him, in 2006, that he might improve his slim chances of holding on to his U.S. Senate seat if he left the Republican party, he replied: "But my first name is Lincoln!" Chafee inherited his Republican identity along with his blueblood pedigree. He was, like his father John, a decent man dutifully struggling within a deeply flawed institution to make it better. Misguided as that course may have been, Lincoln Chafee had the respect of a deeply democratic state for honoring his heritage. He was the only Republican in the U.S. Senate to vote against authorizing military action in the Senate. Our new junior Democratic Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, another privileged patrician, looks as if he might continue in this valuable role of putting principle first.