Ideologically, Sen. Jim Jeffords didn’t switch, the Republican Party did. The announcement by Sen. Jeffords of Vermont yesterday that he reportedly would leave the GOP to become an independent merely highlighted what has long been obvious. Starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the ’90s, both political parties shifted to the right, leaving the long tradition of Northeastern Republicans uncomfortably on their party’s fringe – and sometimes in the camp of the opposition.

Sen. Jeffords’ decision certainly shakes up the Senate, but his state, like Maine, still will be best served by political leaders who combine fiscal pragmatism with social tolerance no matter the latest political fashion in Washington. It was up to him to decide how he could best continue that tradition, and he has apparently chosen to work outside a party to which his family has belonged for generations.

New England in its recent past has been ably represented by senators such as Margaret Chase Smith and William Cohen in Maine, Warren Rudman in New Hampshire, John Chafee in Rhode Island. All Republicans who would be considered moderate by today’s standards, just as Sens. Jeffords, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee are currently. New England provided the Senate with outward-looking Republicans when Dixiecrats romped in the South and continues to do so now that the South has changed parties.

The failure of the region’s GOP to follow the new themes of the party has sometimes infuriated its leadership, and part of Sen. Jeffords reason for leaving may have to do with being slighted by President George Bush for the senator’s failure to support the administration’s tax cut. If that’s the case, the president will have a harder time persuading Congress to support his programs in part because of his own political miscalculation.

Democrats, who are near frothing with joy over a turn of events that seemingly hands them the Senate, might keep two events in mind. In January, Republicans, who held the 51st vote in Vice President Dick Cheney, nevertheless negotiated a power-sharing agreement with Democrats at the start of the current session. And in 1994, Democrats controlled the White House and Congress but forgot that being in power means, first, listening to others before charting a course. The GOP in elections that year swamped them.