Cheney Lied From the Beginning

The Nation reports on former (1999-2006) senator Lincoln Chafee's (R-RI) new memior, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President. "He has written a searing indictment of how his fellow Republicans disgraced themselves by bowing to the Bush Administration's extremist demands, from the perspective of a moderate who came to feel deeply estranged from the party to which he once felt loyally bound."

"Chafee had convinced himself that a similar [Rockerfellerian] spirit might prevail under the younger Bush. He quickly learned otherwise. The day after the Supreme Court handed Bush the presidency by halting the Florida recount, Chafee relates in his book, Dick Cheney dropped by for a closed-door lunch with the handful of moderate Senate Republicans. As Cheney ticked off the incoming Administration's priorities--disavowing the Kyoto Protocol, canceling the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ramming through a $1.6 trillion tax cut--Chafee realized that all the talk of Bush being a "uniter" had been a sham. He also realized that Republicans of his father's ilk were no longer treated with even a modicum of respect ("Cheney was not asking for support--he was ordering us to provide it"). And they seldom stood up for themselves: instead of voicing objections to the Vice President-elect's "shockingly divisive" agenda, his colleagues nodded obsequiously. "Mr. Cheney tore our best campaign promises to shreds and the moderates acquiesced instead of pelting him with outrage," Chafee angrily recalls. "It was the most demoralizing moment of my seven-year tenure in the Senate.""

"In fairness to the targets of his criticism, Chafee did some acquiescing of his own through the years. Unlike former Vermont Senator James Jeffords, he was not so disgusted with the Administration that he was prompted to leave the party. Some of the worst legislation of the Bush era--the Patriot Act, the 2005 bankruptcy bill--garnered his support, and he refrained from taking a clear stand against some of the White House's most reckless ideas, such as privatizing Social Security. To his credit, though, Chafee did resist subscribing to certain articles of faith. To the fury of groups like the Club for Growth, he refused to support Bush's tax cuts. And to the rage of the religious right, he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and was one of only three GOP senators to oppose the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, which many Democrats supported. In 2002 he was also the only GOP senator to vote against the Iraq War resolution."