Here’s what the man writes in today’s Times: “During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We [Republicans] believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive.”

Baloney. During the first Bush administration, Congress imposed regulations on the private sector far more substantial than any it has passed during the last five years: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Restoration Act, for example. Danforth voted for the former and was the lead sponsor of the latter. He voted for the first Bush’s tax increase in 1990. And he voted for the first major regulatory initiative of the Clinton administration, the Family and Medical Leave Act. Republican congressmen have become less pro-regulation, not more, and it is partly because they are no longer burdened by the likes of Senator Danforth.