The Chafee Win and Partisan Purity

Many Republicans today are lamenting the support Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee received for his primary win over Mayor Stephen Laffey of Cranston yesterday. Chafee will be the GOP nominee for the Senate in spite of a voting record that's fairly liberal.

Although Laffey insisted throughout the primary campaign that he was no conservative and trumpeted many views of a more liberal tenor, his candidacy was embraced by conservatives throughout the country, such is their revulsion toward Chafee.

It's interesting to look at the Senator's win and the ongoing drama of Joe Lieberman, who I think is going to win as an independent candidate for re-election to the Senate in Connecticut this year, in the light of history.

Once upon a time, America's two major political parties were great tents that contained ideologically disparate members nonetheless united on certain core beliefs.

The Republican Party was a moderately conservative coalition that contained classic conservatives like Barry Goldwater, pragmatists like Jim Rhodes, George Romney, and Hugh Scott, and northeasterners who tilted liberal on social issues, like Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. In spite of their differences, they generally were advocates of foreign policy realism, fiscal moderation, a less intrusive federal government, and a strong military. There were definite flaws in the Republican Party of the 1940s to 1970s, such as its slowness to embrace the cause of civil rights for African-Americans. But it was a place where those of the center-right could be relatively happy together.

The Democratic Party was a moderately liberal coalition that contained classic liberals like Hubert Humphrey and Abraham Ribicoff, pragmatists like Stuart Symington and Henry "Scoop" Jackson, and southerners who were conservative on social issues, some of them unconscionably so when it came to civil rights. In spite of their differences, they--like their Republican counterparts--were advocates of foreign policy realism, of a Keynesian approach to the federal budget (later embraced by Richard Nixon who once famously declared, "I am a Keynsian" and by default, via supply side economincs, by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush), a more active federal government, and a strong military. (In the late 50s and early 60s, the Dems wanted to spend more on nuclear arms than Republicans did). Some members of the Democratic Party were shameful segregationists. (Among them was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who switched to the Republican Party in the mid-1960s, and who moderated his views after the passage of the great civil rights legislation.) But the Democratic Party was a place where those of the center-left could be relatively happy together.

These less ideologically pure parties may have been good for America, especially at a time when the country faced an implacable foe in the Soviet Union and a Cold War that was mostly not fought on battlefields. America had to be at its best in order to contain the Communist threat, Republicans and Democrats realized. Our country was often not at its best in this era. But, fitfully, the parties usually allowed for the development of an American consensus on a variety of issues and within the parties themselves, useful debates in which all had their say, took place.

The Republican national party and its Senate campaign committee were living out of the old center-right consensus model in backing Lincoln Chafee in this year's primary. The party wants to maintain control of the US Senate and isn't concerned with the niceties of ideological purity. Chafee squeaked out a win last night.

Numerous factors have contributed to the heightened ideological fervor in both the Republican and Democratic parties--the effects of the Civil Rights struggle and the War in Vietnam, the removal of a lot of politics from the smoke-filled room in deference to primaries and caucuses, and the emergence of the Religious Right in the 1980s being three big ones.

But in the future, will the old model employed by the national Republicans in the Rhode Island race be acceptable to the party rank-and-file, to the bloggers who provide intellectual and practical support to the party, and to its more ideological leaders? Will the newer ideological model, embraced by many Democrats as well as Republicans, consign us for decades to Red vs. Blue shouting matches? Or will the jihadist threat, like the Communist threat of an earlier era, cause partisans to be less concerned with ideological purity, more accepting of diversity within their ranks, and more pragmatic in their approach to policy?

The continued strong support which liberal Rudy Giuliani is receiving for his presidential run from conservative Republicans may be an early harbinger of a reversion to big tent political parties, even among rank and file neocon bloggers.