Comments bharat has made

Playing Offense Versus Playing Defense

David:

I do not agree for a simple reason:

Chafee has proven instrumentally effective at blocking some of Bush's environmental madness, but just as much he serves an important symbolic role. Republicans in Congress, and out in the hinterlands, need to be shown that a) it's safe to be a Republican environmentalist, and b) environmental organizations will welcome them. If they'll drop the partisan warfare, the Sierra Club will too.

The party in the majority gets the committee chairmanship and the inside track to legislation, the minority party can only play defense. While Chafee has played defense pretty well, he's one more republican standing in the way of a democratic majority which most people will agree will result in saner environmental laws and priorities (playing on offense). So, there is no alternative, every seat must be won.

It's a two-person see-saw, if one party has staked its position at the extreme, you can't sit in the middle, you can't win that way. I wish Americans would study parlimentary politics a little more closely.

Also, the politics of Lincoln Chafee get him wins in Rhode Island and it's a stretch to say that a Chafee style "conservative" has any chance of winning a Republican primary (which is the real election in, say, Oklahoma) however much moral support Mr Chafee can provide.

Chafee would be a good person to have if the democrats already had a working majority, but he's a luxury in all other cases. On The Sierra Club and Lincoln Chafee posted 3 years, 7 months ago 8 Responses