Back in 1998 I offered the Republican Party some unsolicited advice.
"Give up the politics of meanness," I said. "It's killing you."

But the G.O.P. never seems to learn. Newt Gingrich once told a group of young Republicans, "I think one of
the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty."

It was in the party's interest to behave graciously and prudently when, with Mr. Gingrich leading the way,
it won control of both houses of Congress in 1994. But the G.O.P. is a party of sore winners, and that
big victory emboldened the extremists and ushered in a sustained period of arrogance and mean-spiritedness
that has hurt the party and turned off much of the country.

The Jim Jeffords fiasco is a culmination. Since the Republican takeover of Congress we've had shutdowns of
the government that backfired on the G.O.P., the impeachment of a president against the will of the people, and
the increasing prominence of such smiley-faced Republicans as Tom "the Hammer" DeLay (who compared the
Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo) and Trent Lott (who jokingly suggested that maybe lightning
would strike Hillary Clinton before she could make it to the Senate).

George W. Bush was supposed to have been a cure for such ills, a new kind of Republican.
He was "a uniter," he kept telling us, "not a divider."

But the hard-core conservatives who controlled the party were not interested in a new kind of Republican.
An affable front man who could raise tons of campaign dollars was fine. But someone who genuinely believed
the party should moderate its views? No.

There was no need to worry. When Mr. Bush picked Dick Cheney as his running mate (and the man
who would actually run things in the White House), he slammed the door on moderates in both parties.
Mr. Cheney, during his tenure as a congressman from Wyoming, was the ultimate right-winger.
He cast votes against the Safe Water Drinking Act, against fair-housing legislation, against federal support
for AIDS testing and counseling, even against funding for school lunches for poor children.

It would be hard to portray Dick Cheney as a uniter.

Those who thought that the loss of the popular vote in the presidential election and the 50-50 split in the
Senate would force Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to govern in a more conciliatory, centrist fashion overlooked
the core of extremism (and arrogance) that characterizes the G.O.P.

Which brings us to Senator Jeffords. He didn't leave the Republican Party. He was chased away by the
close-minded, mean-spirited figures who control the party and are damaging it badly. Mr. Bush trailed
the combined candidacies of Al Gore and Ralph Nader by more than three million votes.
And now the G.O.P. has lost the Senate. Can the House be far behind?

The Bush White House and others humiliated Senator Jeffords. They wanted his vote, but they didn't want
anything else to do with him. It's a measure of the fanaticism that infects the G.O.P. that party leaders could
risk the loss of one house of Congress and jeopardize the president's entire agenda to punish a senator who
at times strayed from the party line.

"Unless the party comes back to the mainstream and stops punishing dissent, they may lose more members
and the support of the American people," said Senator Joseph Lieberman.

And John McCain, who has more than once felt the wrath of his fellow Republicans, said,
"Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party,
  and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up."