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How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President
Thomas Dunne Books
April 2008
On Sale: April 17, 2008
272 pages ISBN: 0312383045 EAN: 9780312383046 Hardcover
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In this smart, candid, and surprising political memoir,
Lincoln Chafee offers a behind-the-scenes look at the first
six years of the Bush Administration from the vantage point
of one of the few Republican moderates in the Senate.
When Senator Chafee (R-RI) went to Washington,
he encountered a Republican Party drifting so far to the
right it no longer stood for the mainstream principles that
united Americans. Instead, under the direction of George W.
Bush, the Party had fallen victim to extremism. In the face
of this trend, Chafee stood fast as one of the most liberal
Republicans in the Senate, seeking to cut across partisan
lines at the very time that they threatened to irrevocably
divide the nation.
A political iconoclast, Chafee was the only
Republican senator to have expressed support for same-sex
marriage; the only Republican to vote in favor of
reinstating the top federal tax rate on upper-income
payers; the only Republican in the Senate to have voted
against authorization of the use of force in Iraq; the only
Republican to vote for the Levin-Reed amendment calling for
a nonbinding timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq; and the only Republican to vote against Supreme Court
nominee Samuel Alito. Chafee favored increased federal
funding for health care, supported affirmative action and
gun control, supported women’s reproductive rights, and
endorsed federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Sometimes referred to by conservatives as a RINO
(Republican in Name Only), Chafee turns the tables on the
right and asks why it has enabled Bush Jr. to pull the GOP
and the nation away from traditional principles of fiscal
conservatism, respect for our environment, and aversion to
foreign entanglements.
Unabashedly frank, Chafee’s memoir recounts his
political journey from small-town mayor to a voice crying
from the congressional wilderness. He offers a forward-
looking assessment of what comes next for the Republican
and Democratic parties, and he also addresses the potential
rise of a third party within the void created by bipartisan
extremism. Most important, Chafee sounds a wake-up call to
his Party, and to all Americans, by challenging our
government to strive, as Abraham Lincoln once
articulated, “to elevate the condition of men.”
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