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I Can't Wait to Vote for a Democrat!
12/28/2003

Even when Senator Lincoln Chafee (RINO, Rhode Island) is apparently inclined to vote in accordance with my wishes as his constituent, he does so for reasons that are worse than disagreement would have been:

The news was a respite from Chafee's worrying over the biggest domestic issue of the year, the Medicare bill. Chafee had supported the Senate version of the bill in June, as a flawed but worthy downpayment on his promise to seek drug benefits for the elderly.

He feared that a compromise would emerge from Senate-House negotiations with too strong a dose of the House version's competition between traditional Medicare and the untested private insurance plans. But he concluded that the conservative public-private experiment was "pretty well neutralized" and "watered down" in the compromise unveiled the week before Thanksgiving.

As it happened, he voted for the bill anyway.

You know, I'm pretty partisan when it comes to the strategic matter of voting for the makeup of the national government. But if my Senator is consistently going to vote in contrast to my preferences, I'd prefer he or she at least make a platform out of that disagreement. In other words, assuming no Republican challengers and no viable independents, I'll be voting for the Democrat in that particular race... even if it turned out to be Patrick Kennedy. (Which would, from where I stand, be ideal.)

For one thing, social conservatives have got to start making some noise where it can make a difference, and undermining Republicans who actively advance the other side's causes minimizes practical risk. For another thing, it's harder to replace a bad Republican with a better Republican unless a Democrat intervenes.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:36 PM EST