Word: weicker
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Despite the Senator's graceful claim that his defeat represented a repudiation of his views, Weicker's loss was due less to the abilities and ideology of his Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Joseph Lieberman, than to the his being abandoned and ostracized by the conservative wing of Connecticut's Republican Party, which has never been thrilled by his outspokenly liberal views. In fact, William F. Buckley Jr. and other prominent conservatives in the state bankrolled Lieberman's campaign and made it explicit that they were doing so in order to pave the way for a politician with appropriate conservative...
DURING his 18 years in the Senate, Weicker established himself as a maverick who challenged his party's leadership and its increasingly conservative slant. Weicker fought the Reagan Administration over its budget priorities and took on the GOP right wing on such issues as civil rights, abortion, school prayer and busing...
From 1983-86, while the Republicans controlled the Senate, Weicker spearheaded a wide-ranging spending bill through the Labor and Health Appropriations Subcommittee that provided more federal funding for education, healthcare programs and aid to persons with disabilities than the Reagan Administration sought. As chairman of the Small Business Committee, he kept the Reagan Administration from abolishing the Small Business Administration. And while Congress and the White House ignored the AIDS crisis, Weicker successfully led the first battle for Federal funding for research...
...When Weicker proclaimed his belief that the federal government should take an active role in promoting and financing higher education at a 1987 congressional hearing, an embattled Secretary of Education William J. Bennett asked in feigned amazement, "You are a Republican?" "Longer than you," Weicker replied...
NEEDLESS to say, Weicker's refusal to toe a straight party line combined with his outspoken manner, hardly endeared him to his colleagues in the Republican Party and he was often bypassed for positions of party leadership, though he clearly had seniority. But Weicker's blustery, abrasive, and confrontational style was resented by colleagues on the other side of the aisle as well, and he was never embraced by the Democrats either, because they considered him to be unpredictable...