This Saturday, September 17, former Senator Charles Percy (R-IL) passed away after suffering for years with Alzheimer’s disease.  Percy, who served in the Senate from 1967 to 1985, was a leading example of a now extinct breed: the liberal Republican. Within months of being elected to the Senate, Percy was spoken of as a likely GOP Presidential nominee. But his meteoric rise within the liberal wing of his party came as that wing was rapidly losing influence. In 1968, rather than run himself, he endorsed Nelson Rockefeller’s Republican presidential primary bid.  He had planned a run in 1976, before Nixon’s Read more