Moderate Republicans – “a vanishing political phenomenon”

Vic responded to my last post on the impeachment and sent me a 2003 article from from the New Yorker on the late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s jaded views on Clinton.

Whatever the Senator thought about Clinton’s perjury the story’s author made this observation about moderate Republicans which the DeLay faction has brought to near extinction:

“Moynihan’s closest friends in the Senate include aging symbols of moderate Republicanism, itself a vanishing political phenomenon. “You’d be amazed how easy it is to get along with Republicans of a certain kind,” Moynihan told me. Over the years, for example, he has worked closely with John Chafee, who now chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee. “Not long ago, in the committee, John announced that we’d just had a vote that came out purely on party lines, and he said, ‘That’s not how we work here.’ But I’m afraid that, more and more, it is.”

This new extremist party is the party that Rod Grams feels at home in.

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