After Jeffords.(Brief Article)

What should Republicans do now that James Jeffords has left the GOP and given the Democrats control of the Senate? The usual suspects have the same helpful advice as ever: move left. President Bush alienated Jeffords by governing from the right, and must now-the moralistic impulse is palpable-expiate his sin.

Jeffords's comments on his way out the door lent credence to this line of analysis. But Jeffords's self-presentation was patently phony. He said that education was the issue that, more than any other, had made him uncomfortable in the Republican party. But Republicans have hardly been moving right on that issue. Bush has been so eager to reach out to Democrats that his education bill got more Democratic votes than Republican ones in the House-the very week Jeffords left the GOP. Yet Jeffords had been willing to stay in the party when its platform called for abolishing the Department of Education.

Jeffords's departure, it is true, is a blow to President Bush's chances of getting conservative initiatives through the Senate. But it is not as big a blow as it was to lose Spence Abraham's seat last November. Or John Ashcroft's. Or Rod Grams's. Those losses reduced the number of conservative votes in the Senate. Jeffords's defection does not. Democratic control of the Senate means that Tom Daschle can put his party's favored issues on the agenda-but those issues, from the patients' bill of rights to prescription-drug subsidies, ...