Angus King Quotes
The only, the only possibility would be if the Republicans are in the majority and they can offer me something that would be especially advantageous to Maine. Somebody said, 'You may be a committee chair.' I don't think so. I don't think anybody would want me that much.
King, Angus. Interview. MPBN News, Maine Public, 2012.
In the Republican convention of 1860, William H. Seward lead Abraham Lincoln for the presidential nomination on the first two ballots. The third ballot showed that Lincoln only one and a half votes short of a majority. Salmon P. Chase was the governor of Ohio and its delegation was chaired by D. K. Cartter. Joseph Medill was Lincoln's "floor manager" and said to Cartter:. The Ohio delegation changed three votes, putting Lincoln over the top. Lincoln had told Medill and others to make no bargains in his name and stated he would not honor such. Lincoln was nominated and elected. He appointed Salmon P. Chase to the U. S. Supreme Court.
This seeming abnormality was the result of most of the House of Representatives Congressional Districts being heavily weighted to one party or the other, some the result of demographics and most the result of intentional gerrymandering by the politicians in the State Legislatures. The Republicans at that time were much better at this than the Democrats and very few of the districts were competitive between the parties. Many Democratic urban districts had small democratic areas of the suburbs added to them giving them a larger majority than they needed to win while taking them out of the suburban districts making them easier to win for the Republicans. The original Constitutional concept that the House represented the people proportionately was then undermined as the Republicans could easily win the vast majority of the congressional seats and at the some tome garner millions of votes less nationally than the Democrats,
Republican Party primary elections had become very contentious. The radical right and the Tea Party, though a minority of the party, had the power to destroy almost any Republican candidate’s chances. So those Republican political candidates were forced to pander to the extreme right and then try and backtrack to the center for the general election. As a result, few people believed the statements of Republican office seekers as no one knew what they really believed including members of their own party, Bush, no longer running for any political position, found himself with much more credibility and influence in the party than those who were running for office. The problem of appealing to party extremes was not unique to the Republicans at that time, but the degree and extent was unprecedented accounting for the distrust.
The 2014 House of Representatives was probably the worst in American History. The Republican Speaker of the House did not have any control over the Tea Party wing of his caucus, but they controlled him in most instances. Even when he made bargains with the President and the Democrats, he could not get his caucus to go along. Almost no legislation was passed and the few bills that were passed were symbolic, were never considered by the Senate and the President did not even have to exercise his power of veto during that Congress.
Angus Stanley King Jr. is an American politician and lawyer who is the junior United States Senator from Maine since 2013. A political independent since 1993, he was the 72nd Governor of Maine from 1995 to 2003.
