ConfirmThem

I agree totally with this post. Don't be dumb guys. Support Chafee and help preserve a razor thin GOP majority.

I look at the states as follows:

Red States -- Let's get two conservative GOP senators
Purple States -- Let's get at least one GOP senator of some stripe
Blue States -- I'll take as many RINOs as you can herd up

I agree that it would be foolish to support a Dem over Chafee. He's the worst Rep in the Senate but he has opposed filibusters, including the one against Alito. Personally, it's easier to vote for a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger than for a Chafee, but he's still marginally better than Whitehouse.

At first, Laffey seemed a better guy but not anymore, since he proclaimed to not be a conservative. If Chafee wins, at least Rhode Island is still competitive. We must hold the Senate.

There are several reasons to dump Chafee for a Democrat.

First, he screws up committee votes. Just look what he did to John Bolton. We have a 10-8 majority on most committees and if he does not vote with the Repubs, he ties anything on his committee up. Even if we lose the R.I. seat, as long as we keep our majority, we have a better comprised 10-8 majority on the committees.

Second, he brings the false image of bipartisianship to anything he opposes. All the mainstream press says is that there was bipartisanship support for not extending President Bush's tax cuts because Chafee and Snowe vote that way. Two out of 55 ain't exactly bipartisan. What it boils down to is that he is further left than most of the Democratic caucus.

Finally, the guy is an empty suit. Just listen to him discuss anything of substance. He makes Lamont look smart.

When I hear Specter say that the Republicans have become a moderate party, that is because there are a very few Repubs who gum up the works. I would rather see them expunged and for us to focus our efforts on getting right-thinking individuals in states like the Dakotas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, etc. Who knows, maybe the remainig moderates will see what happened to Schwartz and Chafee and modify their behavior accordingly.

Those are good points regarding the damage that Chafee brings us. A year ago with 55 seats, I would be totally in agreement that we should support Laffey, or some other conservative, even if it means losing a seat. However, the climate has changed since then, and we have a number of "safe" seats with difficulties (MO, MT, and OH). Chafee may have some value as the 51st or 52nd Repub if it comes to that (not the 50th, because he would flip like Jeffords). For example, we could get better ratios on the committees.

One other thing, even if we get past this year, we also need to look at 2008. Off the top of my head, I think the Repubs have to defend 21 of 33 seats. We need to reserve some wiggle room for 2008. Again, while I doubt he has value as the 50th Repub, he might have some value as the 51st or 52nd.

is anyone else troubled by the NRSC putting out ads attacking Laffey?

http://www.nrsc.org/senator/default.aspx?ST=ri

Andrew, I think you've been clear and consistent in your call to defeat the filibuster tactic for judicial nominees. And you're right to do so. But if you look at those cloture votes, none of them have even been close. The lowest successful cloture vote was 65, and highest unsucessful was 55. Five or six votes would have to sway before any of those votes had a different outcome.

Where Chafee's vote will make a difference is on a Supreme Court pick. Alito got in the high 50's, and that was for one of the most qualified and uncontroversial conservative picks imaginable. If a more controversial pick was sent up--say a JRB, for example--it would be a scramble for that 50th vote. If Chafee voted no on Alito, there is no solid nominee that he will vote yes on.

I won't cry if Laffey hands his seat to the Dems. It will show what happens when GOP candidates abandon qualified conservative jurists.

"Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around"
-G.K. Chesterton

No, Chafee didn't make the difference for Kavanaugh, Pryor, or Brown. But the cloture votes could be closer during the next Congress. And, there's also the tiny matter of which party controls the Senate. If Laffey had better poll numbers against Whitehouse, the vote on Tuesday would be no big deal, but Laffey's more than 25 points behind Whitehouse.

I hope Laffey just wipes the floor with that sniveling pathetic excuse for a man, Lincoln Chafee. He is an embarassment to his father's legacy and an embarassment to the term "moderate."

Lincoln Chafee represents everything that Democrats claim Republicans are, but the overwhelming majority are not. Spoiled, silver-spoon fed trust fund babies. I wonder if anyone ever asked his father if he really thought that his son Lincoln should succeed him in the Senate. I'd say chances are at least even that he'd have said "no way in hell."

Sometimes companies performance starts to lag when they get into businesses that are too far from their core mission. So, they sell them off to contract slightly and concentrate on what they are good at.

I think the same goes for the GOP here. It's a big tent, but it's not big enough to include Lincoln Chafee.

what do your really think?

The NYT is reporting that the GOP is threatening to concede RI to the Democrats if Laffey wins. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10senate.html?hp&ex=1157860....

This is outrageous, though not surprising. Republicans in my home state -- Ohio -- have long tried to avoid contested primaries, always favoring the country club set over conservatives. Does the Republican hierarchy believe in elections or not?

Earlier this year I posted that I might well not vote for Mike DeWine. What I read in response here was that we must support the GOP nominee, and if we don't like the incumbent, push for a primary challenge.

Right. Tell Laffey and his supporters.

By the way, I am not a Republican. These shenanigans are one reason why.

Look at the vote counts. In NONE of them was Chafee the critical vote. Either we were well short of cloture or invoked it easily. Trading Chafee for a Democrat would not have changed a single one of those cloture votes.

In fact, I have seen many discussions, on many websites over the last couple of years about Chafee's support for cloture. I think you'd find a healthy number of Republicans who firmly believe that if we had 59 votes for cloture on a "controversial" nominee and needed Chafee to be the 60th that we wouldn't have him.

Sure he's for cloture - but to date he's only been for cloture when it's meaningless. He's able to go home to his liberal supporters and say "It didn't matter that I voted for cloture" either because "I knew they didn't have the votes for it" or "They already had more than 60 votes for it and I couldn't have stopped it."

And after watching this campaign, Chafee is no ccredit to the party. He sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about - that's assuming he can find enough decisiveness to form an opinion at all. Honestly, if his last name wasn't Chafee I doubt this guy would've been able to win any office. Talk about getting by on your name. I don't think we should necessarily purge any and all moderates, but Chafee's just over the top.

Yes, we defend 21 seats. But it's a presidential year so red state candidates will likely get a boost. We also have no idea what the retirement situation might look like. I'm not about to give someone like Chafee 6 more years in the Senate in exchange for speculation.

As for the seats - here are the Republicans up in 2008
Alexander (TN) - safe
Allard (CO) - possibly competitive
Chambliss (GA) - safe
Cochran (MS) - safe
Coleman (MN) - possibly competitive
Collins (ME) - she's as popular as Snowe and unlikely to lose
Cornyn (TX) - safe
Craig (ID) - safe
Dole (NC) - safe
Domenici (NM) - safe unless he retires
Enzi (WY) - safe
Graham (SC) - safe (even if Graham is defeated in a primary)
Hagel (NE) - safe (see Graham above)
Inhofe (OK) - safe
McConnell (KY) - safe
Roberts (KS) - safe
Sessions (AL) - safe
Smith (OR) - possibly competitive
Stevens (AK) - safe
Sununu (NH) - could be competitive
Warner (VA) - competitive - he's likely to retire.

So, while we defend a lot of seats, most of them are in states where the Republican presidential candidate is likely to rack up big numbers, and where the natural tilt of the state plpus incumbancy make unseating our guys an uphill climb. Only ME and OR are blue states, and Collins should be safe (don't know about Smith). And we have only 5 more in purple states (CO, NH, VA, MN, NM). If the incumbants run in those states they will be favorites.

Now look at where the Democrats have to defend:
Baucus (MT) - red state
Biden (DE)
Durbin (IL)
Harkin (IA)
Johnson (SD) - almost lost last time in 2002- red state
Kerry (MA)
Landrieu (LA) - red state
Lautenberg (NJ) - retirement again?
Levin (MI)
Pryor (AR) - red state
Reed (RI)
Rockefeller (WV) - red state

So they are defending almost half of their seats on our turf. They may also face retirement in NJ (Lautenberg is only there because they had nobody else in 2002) where Corzine seems to be bent on running the state into the ground. Levin is over 70, and Harkin will be 69 in 2008. And MI and IA are purple and would be very competitive if there were open seats.

So the landscape, while superficially seeming to be good for Demomcrats, isn't really any more favorable to them than it is this year in terms of where they have to run and win. And with a presidential race at the top of the ticket Democrat challengers in red states are going to not only have to buck incumbancy but buck big margins against their standard bearer (In most states of the Plains and Mountain West, Bush pulled in close to or above 60% of the vote in 2004). It certainly does not signal a need to "be nice to Linc" as insurance for 2008.

I think its pretty impossible to determine which seats are safe for '08. As we've seen this past year, traditionally safe seats have turned competitive due to unforseen events.

Fast200 is right. MT, MO, and OH shouldn't be a problem, but they are worrying me.

As for 2008, there are too many open questions to feel comfortable.

I believe Allard is retiring, so Colorado will be an open seat (even if he doesn't, I don't think he is known as a great campaigner and his last election was close). Salazar won the last seat, so we may need Owens to hold it. Domenici is getting older and if he retires, that could be tough to hold. If Warner retires, Virginia could be competitive. Smith in blue Oregon and Sununu in purple New Hampshire could have competitive races.

On the other side, Baucus, Johnson, Landrieu, Pryor, and Rockefeller are all in red states, but they straddle the line enough to be tough candidates. Plus, as we have seen in Florida and others in 2006, we need to recruit the right challengers.

Too many open questions - we need as much wiggle room as possible.

"Fast200 is right. MT, MO, and OH shouldn't be a problem, but they are worrying me."

I don't know what the guys in Montana or Missouri are doing, but here in Ohio DeWine's latest ad features him in his traditional campaign flannel shirt and very thick glasses. He looks a bit like a shopkeeper in the New England town Newhart based of his TV shows in.

Mike fortunately is not hypocritical enough (yet) to boast of support for conservative judicial nominees. He unfortunately is politically tone-deaf enough to ignore Sherrod Brown's gaping national defense weaknesses. Instead, Mike tells us he is against taxes, and insinuates that Sherrod Brown doesn't care for old people on Social Security.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

At this point, the positive news on judicial nominations coming from Ohio is that if the GOP manages to come back next year with 55 Senators again, a replacement for DeWine on the Judiciary Committee may well be needed.

Any nominees?

Okay, so we don't know what's going to happen in '08.

But here's what we know in '06.

Chafee is the most liberal Republican in the Senate. Typically, on rating scales from conservative organizations he is always the most liberal and virtually always comes up more liberal than Ben Nelson.

Even his supporters figure that in a 50-50 Senate, Chafee will jump ship so that Republicans lost control. So he's not very useful as the guy to tilt the balance.

In order to gain control of the Senate the Democrats need 5 or 6 seats. They would need to win in PA, MT, MO, OH, AND TN to get to 50. Do we really think that there will be such a Democrat wave that they will win in TN and yet somehow fail to oust a Republican in Rhode Island?

We know that Chafee continues to trail Whitehouse, and recent polls show him in the low-40s.

We know that there are a lot of Republicans, even in Rhode Island, who are very pissed off about the negative campaign the NRSC is running and may very well take it out on Chafee in the general by not bothering to vote for him.

The total picture is that Chafee probably has less than a 50% chance to hold this seat against Whitehouse regardless, and that any situation in which we would "need" Chafee would probably mean that he will have lost his seat or we'll have been swamped so badly that Chafee won't even be the 48th Republican let alone 50, 51 or 52.

Now add on that if Chafee wins the primary the NRC and NRSC will likely sink tons more cash into the cesspool to try to save Chafee against Whitehouse. Money that, because of brilliant decisions like attacking Laffey, they are having trouble raising in the first place. The cost-benefit is that Chafee costs more than he's worth. Let him lose in the primary and then maybe the NRSC can invest its money saving more loyal members of the party like Sen. DeWine, Sen. Burns, Sen. Talent, and especially, Sen. Santorum.

It is time for Chafee to go.

Isn't Cantwell in a dead heat in WA right now?

Many of you seem to be losing sight of the fact that it's essential for judicial confirmations for the Reps to keep their majority. A Chafee win helps that, while a Chafee lose harms it. Can't get any simpler than that.

While it's true Chafee's on judicial filibusters is "perfect" - although as has been noted above, in no case was his vote decisive- it is not especially extraordinary for a Senator, particularly a Republican one, to vote to uphold the Senate's traditional duty to accord a simple up-and-down vote to qualified judicial nominees. We should expect nothing less. If the case for Chafee rests on his affording us the courtesy of not actively obstructing Bush's nominees, then I think he is destined for defeat in this week's primary.

Meanwhile, I find it odd that on a blog whose express purpose is to advocate for the confirmation of qualified, principled, conservative judicial nominees, no one has seen fit to recall Chafee's vote against the confirmation of just such a nominee- Samuel Alito- to SCOTUS. So it's not as if Chafee's record on judges is precisely "perfect" or unblemished. If he won't even vote to replace a federalism-minded moderate/socially liberal Justice with a more conservative one, what assurances do we have that in he'll vote in the future to replace a member of the court's solidly liberal wing with a principled conservative jurist?

Matthew Friednly makes the point that a Chafee win helps confirmations because it is essential to confirmations to keep a majority.

First - a majority is not enough given the Democrats willingness to use and threaten filibusters. We need 60 votes or sufficient consensus.

Second - there is no indication that Chafee would help us hold the majority if he were the 50th Republican.

Third - If Chafee indeed stayed on as the 50th Republican it would still not help us with another Sam Alito as Chafee would vote with the Democrats to defeat him.

I was once a "we need Chafee because that's what we can get in RI" advocate. I have ceased to see his usefulness. Either his vote is unnecessary because we have more than enough votes, or his vote is worthless because we are well short of enough. Chafee has NOT ONCE been the critical 50th or 60th vote when Republicans needed him. And in fact I would doubt he would come through in such a situation. I'd sooner see Democrats take a 51-49 majority and play their usual games with it on nominations. It would make an even better campaign issue in 2008 than it did in 2002 and 2004.

The point is that Chafee will wind up being one of two things - 1) unnecessary as we will have retained a majority with or without him, or 2) a traitor like Jeffords who will let our control disappear by defecting.

Let's not forget that even with a 10-8 majority on the Foreign Relations Committee, we can't get John Bolton's nomination out to the full Senate because Linc "can't make up his mind and wants more time." In a narrower majority we'll be lucky to keep a 9-8 or 10-9 majority on committees, in which case any committee with Linc on it will be effectively controlled by liberals. I'd rather a 51-49 GOP majority without Linc than a 52-48 majority with him. At least we can purge the bad influence on our side of the committee aisle.

Lincoln Chafee is a liberal. And liberal Republicans are dangerous because they lend "bi-partisan" credibility to liberal attacks against Conservatives.

As for the U.S. Senate in 2008:

Projected Possible GOP Retirements:
MS - Cochran
NM - Domenici
KS - Roberts
VA - Warner

CO? - I've heard talk that Allard may retire, but at 63 he seems a little bit young. I think that he will serve one more term.

Projected Possible DNC Retirements:
IA - Harkin
NJ - Lautenberg
WV - Rockefeller

Projected GOP Tough Races in 2008:
OR - Smith. Going to be tough no matter what. DNC's No. 1 pickup target.
NM if Domenici retires
VA if Warner retires
CO if Allard retires. Gov. Bill Owen or former Interior Secretary Gale Norton could probably hold this seat fairly easily if either ran. Gale Norton lost to Allard in the primary the year he won this seat.
KS if Roberts retires and Gov. Sebelius runs for this seat

NH? - I think that Sen. Sununu will hold his seat comfortably in New Hampshire. He has a legacy name and, unlike Chafee, he has done good work as a Senator representing the state in DC fairly without ticking off conservatives. He represents the libertarian-conservative wing of the party, which weathers tough challenges and conditions much, much better than either Liberal Republicans or "Big Government Conservatives."

Projected DNC Tough Races in 2008:
MT - Baucus if a big name runs against him like Gov. Mark Raciot.
SD - Johnson if Gov. Mike Rounds runs against him.
LA - Landrieu. GOP's to lose. She's a dead man walking.
NJ - if Lautenberg retires and Christine Todd Whitman runs
AR - only if Gov. Mike Huckabee or another big name runs against him. Otherwise, Pryor looks pretty safe.
WV - if Rockefeller retires or if U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito runs

reldim,

Committee chairmanships and majorities are based on overall Senate majority. Whether you like Chafee or not, whether or not he's a liberal, he helps give us majority status throughout the Senate, including on the Judiciary Committee. Opposing him hurts that status. Understand?

#21,

I heard Hillary might retire too...

You're right, but if we hold onto the majority and shed ourselves of Chafee, every committee that Chafee was on immediately becomes stronger and more conservative - which might allow the Republicans on those committees to get more done since they won't have to worry about leaning on Chafee.