Former RI Sen. Lincoln Chafee Leaves GOP

The Associated Press Sunday, September 16, 2007; 11:18 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he has left the Republican Party because the national GOP has drifted too far from him on critical issues, including the war in Iraq, the economy and the environment.

"It's not my party anymore," Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday.

. . . He also criticized Republican leaders for abandoning fiscal conservatism, once a mainstay of the GOP's platform, by passing tax cuts without spending cuts to balance the resulting loss of revenue. . .

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________________________________________________________________________ Occasionally a political party gets hijacked and the 'neo-cons,' however you care to define that moniker, have hijacked Republicanism. It started with Newt Gingrich and truly caught fire with the likes of Tom DeLay. My father's party of fiscal conservatism and respect for individual rights has gone the way of Main Street businessmen--buried by the Wal-Martism of anything goes so long as there is profit in it. Republicans have not been destroyed by Democrats or even their ill-conceived plan for Middle East conquest. They have shot themselves in both feet and men like Lincoln Chafee are letting them know. It's a terrible shame, because responsible Republicans have done as much for this country as responsible Democrats and they will be a long time living down their excesses.

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