Chafee's Defections Loom Large in Senate Race

[Judi Lynn]

A Republican on the Edge
Chafee's Defections Loom Large in Senate Race

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 14, 2006; Page A01

EXETER, R.I. -- Lincoln Chafee was cleaning a horse stall on his well-manicured farm one recent early morning, describing his latest encounter with hostile home-state Republicans.

The GOP senator had appeared the previous night before the Scituate Republican Town Committee to seek the endorsement of the small but influential group. In his halting, soft-spoken way, Chafee defended his opposition to the war in Iraq, domestic wiretapping and the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. as the principled positions of an old-school conservative.

Chafee, 53, once could count on voters in Rhode Island to tolerate his maverick ways, but this time the response was blank stares. "Nobody listened to my reasoning," Chafee recounted as he piled hay into a wheelbarrow. "They support the president on everything."

Few paths to victory are more convoluted than the one Chafee must travel to win election to a second term this year in this strongly Democratic state. Chafee will face Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, a conservative, in the Sept. 12 GOP primary, and he must convince voters that he is "Republican enough," despite his numerous defections from the party and President Bush. If he survives the primary, Chafee then must hope that he can hold the Republican vote while wooing moderate Democrats and independents to stave off what is sure to be a strong Democratic challenge.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/13/AR2006041301917.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. Chafee is one of 3 relatively decent Republican senators.

ANYONE who still supports that MFer bush is a stupid MFing idiot. Period.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. But why do we have to put up with a Republican at all in a

predominately Democratic state?

[LynnTheDem]

4. Live free.

And Diebold.

[ramapodem]

5. My friends in RI

tell me his dad was a popular politican, so people go on the name not the party.

[splat]

6. Local context

The state Dems there are a bunch of bickering backroom pols. He wouldn't be welcome or comfortable if he switched. His Repubs are fiscally conservative and socially liberal and few.

[NewJeffCT]

10. sounds like a lot of the northeast

Connecticut is solidly Democratic, yet a Democrat has not been elected governor since the 1980s, and we're way behind in the 2006 governor's race, too.

And, Mass has had a string of Republican governors - Weld & now Romney.

NYC has had Giuliani & now Bloomberg as Republican mayors, and Pataki has been governor for years there.

[Pachamama]

2. Chafee should switch to being Independent....and he'd win even bigger!

The people described in the room that are Bushbots are simply lost....Chafee would be able to become independent, get the democrat and moderate Repubs vote and win while getting rid of the Senate controlled by the GOP majority by tipping the numbers....

I have to say I agree, that Chafee is one of three GOP'rs that I think have any integrity.

[brentspeak]

11. He'd be in the driver's seat had he become Independent a few years ago

Had he done so a year or two after Bush became President, he would have been at liberty to vote against the Repubs on many important bills. But because he stayed in the Republican Party, he apparently felt obligated to vote with the GOP on most bills where his was a deciding vote. Doesn't matter that he's voted against the GOP occasionally, or that he made a big splash when he told the press he didn't vote for Bush in the 2004 elections: To RI Republicans, Chafee's a RINO; to RI Democrats, Chafee's a Bush-enabler; and to RI independents, Chafee's a phony political maverick.

[DuaneBidoux]

7. Say a prayer for his GOP primary opponent

Because in this "heavily Democratic state" the conservative opponent is sure to lose to the Dem.

[Raine]

8. I don't have sympathy for Chafee

because staying in that party helps to give it the illusion of moderation and the thanks he gets for it is a kick in the ass from them.

Edit: spelling

[cyr330]

9. Chafee may defect "sometimes'

Usually, he goes right along with the rest of the Republican pack, so he's nothing to brag about. Just because he's disagreed a few times certainly doesn't make him any kind of saint or anybody to jack off about. Essentially,he's a fucking pig, and one can equivocate all day, but that won't change any of his other whorish votes.

On edit: When they've needed all the Repukes possible to ram through yet another reprehensible law, he's always jumped into the fray without hesitation.