I sympathize with Republicans who leave the GOP these days, because the idea that the party left them is really accurate. The way the GOP was from the time of Eisenhower through the early 1990s, Lincoln Chaffee would fit in quite well with the old-style New England Republican, of which there were many. Just to name a few, you had Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Bill Weld, Paul Celucci, William Cohen, Jim Jeffords, John Chaffee, and George H. W. Bush. That's in addition to a bunch of other moderate Northeastern Republicans of the Rudy Guiliani/Christine Whitman/Arlen Specter variety. But their ranks have been dramatically thinned in recent years. Susan Collins is still active and a Republican, but the others are either dead, retired from politics, or they've left the party.
The amazing thing is how openly hostile the GOP has been to many of these people -- as if actively trying to push them out of the party. Hell, even GHW Bush was called a RINO. Probably the most dramatic example of that hostility was when William Weld, Republican governor of Massachusetts, had his appointment to an ambassadorship filibustered by that horrid old racist Jesse Helms, effectively ending Weld's political career. Weld was smart, wildly charismatic, and had great poll numbers with centrists. He was basically a more likeable Mitt Romney, only with an actual track-record of success when he was governor. He could very well have been a Republican president, but his own party turned on him for his lack of ideological purity.
It'll be interesting to see if the GOP can hold its fire on Chris Christy. He's not a moderate, by any stretch of the imagination, but he's making nice with Obama, which is ruffling a lot of feathers. Will the Republican base be able to keep its fury leashed, or will they destroy or alienate yet another Northeastern Republican, furthering the process of transforming the GOP into a regional, neo-confederate party?
