Trash
Toolbox
Published: March 25, 2005
In its campaign to unseat Sen. James Jeffords next year, the state Republican Party is gambling it can practice the scurrilous politics of the national party without turning off too many Vermont Republicans. The party may succeed in raising big bucks from outside the state, but most Vermont Republicans are likely to be repelled by its tactics.
Vermont Republicans have two faces. One is the party's chairman, Jim Barnett, who employs the scorched-earth rhetoric favored by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The other is Gov. James Douglas, the mild-mannered moderate who calls Jeffords a friend.
To see what Barnett is up to, it is useful to look at one phrase tucked within the diatribe he sent to out-of-state Republicans to raise money for the 2006 election.
Barnett decries Jeffords' decision to quit the Republican Party in 2001, saying Jeffords had single-handedly turned over control of the Senate to Tom Daschle and the Democrats. Then Barnett says this: "As a 'thank you,' the Hollywood Left and liberals from all over the country have poured thirty pieces of silver, I mean $4.5 million, into Turncoat Jeffords' campaign war chest."
Thirty pieces of silver? The phrase speaks of the most famous betrayal in history, one that is especially present in people's minds during Holy Week. The phrase is dropped into the sentence as if it were a slip of the tongue, a mistake, a joke.
Jeffords has been called Benedict Arnold. He is used to that. But at a time when the Republican leadership is fomenting religious hysteria by exploiting the tragedy of Terri Schiavo's life and death, it is taking the matter to another level to equate Jeffords, even in so jocular a fashion, with Judas. In some quarters "Hollywood Left" is also a code word for Jews. Barnett is playing with the most vicious form of innuendo.
Barnett goes on to say: "My fellow Vermont Republicans and I are still outraged by Jim Jeffords' treachery."
Some Republicans are. Some never liked Jeffords. He was always moderate to liberal in his views, though he strained mightily to remain loyal to President Reagan and the first President Bush. Sometimes he had to part ways with them. He is an independent-minded senator, and Vermonters have rewarded him by re-electing him in every election since 1974.
But many Vermont Republicans were far from outraged by Jeffords' defection. Treachery may not be the word they would use to describe Bush's policies, but many Vermont Republicans have felt more outraged by Bush's assaults on the environment, his dishonest and incompetent war, his practice of torture, and his fiscal recklessness than by Jeffords' decision to turn away from Bush.
One prominent Republican, Sen. Diane Snelling, called Barnett's letter "trash."
Politics is politics, and the parties will do what they need to do to raise money. Jeffords' staff is seeking to make hay of Barnett's letter.
But it is worth remembering that Republicans survive politically in Vermont, not by practicing the politics of innuendo and attack. They survive through the ordinary decency and the moderate, reasonable politics practiced by Douglas.
Barnett may win points with Tom DeLay and his ilk by sinking into the gutter. He may turn on the spigots of big-money Republicans. But he is not going to defeat Jim Jeffords. He probably knows he can't. But just as the Republicans will use Terri Schiavo as a catalyst for raising money, so they will use Jeffords' defection. It's all about the silver.
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