Why you 
you :)
(of course, I'll be voting for him too)
Posted on 09/13/2006 9:11:40 AM PDT by gopwinsin04
September 13, 2006 How Chafee Won
Late last Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Dole hurried up to Sen. Lincoln Chafee on the floor of the Senate and put her foot down. You might lose this race, she told him, if you don’t put your best ads back up.
Chafee, gun-shy about the negative ads he knew Dole was referring to, relented, as he’s done innumerable times in the year and a half since it became clear that he’d face a primary challenge.
The next night, Rhode Island television viewers were once again treated to the sounds of Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey joking that old people should die off. They heard the charges that he had doctored his resume. The tag line: “Steve Laffey: Untrustworthy, unpredictable, unreliable.” And the most important part of the ad was the FEC-mandated ending. Lincoln Chafee approved this message. A contrast was drawn.
By Tuesday, six months worth of hard-hitting spots like these, many funded directly by the NRSC, had driven unfavorable perceptions of Laffey to scary heights among non-affiliated voters.
But Laffey’s campaign professed not to worry. They weren’t concerned about unaffiliated voters. They assumed that few would be motivated to spend an hour at the polls waiting to vote for Lincoln Chafee. Laffey ran his campaign as if he were a presidential candidate preparing for a caucus. He tried to meet as many Republicans as possible. His campaign identified and kept in touch with about 30,000 stalwarts. Based on past turnout, that seemed like enough.
In every speech, Laffey touted his conservative credentials, his record as mayor, and, somewhat discordantly, his independence. After all, his audience was the small and restive Republican base in RI – conservative and independent. The ads he ran were all positive, but the Club for Growth spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running spots that blasted Chafee. The messages were was confusing. Some of Laffeys’ ads were populist in content; he recalled how his brother died of AIDS and his parents live on Social Security. Others stressed his commitment to lowering taxes, securing borders and protecting America. Laffey’s campaign and the Club could not coordinate their strategy, and they often dismissed each other’s decisions in private.
Laffey hoped to convince Republicans that he was better on their issues and could get things done. Chafee’s ads were designed to prevent Laffey from making a gut-level connection with voters.
Rhode Island will become a case study in the effectiveness of the Republicans’ 72 Hour Program. Behind the curtain, Chafee’s campaign spent $500,000 to squeeze out every conceivable voter from neighborhoods across the state. They searched for independents who voted Democrat in municipal elections but who had once upon a time voted for a Republican for president or governor or senator. There were a few of those. They looked for non-affiliated voters in Republican neighborhoods. Using microtargeting techniques, they even tried to figure out which committed Democrats might be tempted to vote for Chafee.
By the end of the summer, Chafee’s campaign had identified 42,000 potential supporters. Then the second part of the program kicked in. Message, here, is a verb. The campaign “messaged” these voters, often individually. Chafee himself called more than 100 of them who were identified as being capable of swinging the votes of colleagues and friends. The standard complement of robocalls, mailings and personal visits were employed. In the twelve days of September, Chafee, the RNC and NRSC made more than 198,000 phone calls to the voters on their list. Many voters received one every two days.
On election day, the Chafee campaign stationed poll watchers at 100 key precincts across the state. By 10:00 am, the RNC and the NRSC were confident that Chafee would win.
It didn’t faze them when Laffey’s campaign bragged about meeting their targets. Chafee had simply found more voters. Laffey’s turnout was sufficient for a universe of Republicans and identified conservatives. But Chafee had found just about every Republican he could hope for and managed to attract at least 10,000 non-Republicans to his tally. One Republican in the state estimates that as many as 60 percent of the primary electorate were not affiliated with the Republican Party. (More than 20,000 Rhose Islanders requested formal disaffiliation forms after voting.) Chafee even managed to blunt Laffey's margin of victory in Cranston to just a few hundred votes.
The same factors that drove Chafee’s victory are giving his Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse, some comfort. The universe of identified Chafee voters is at least 20,000 less than the number of Democrats who voted for Whitehouse in yesterday’s noncompetitive primary. [MARC AMBINDER]
Leave him alone, Hildy. He's ignorant and proud of it.
The Ignoramus Pride Movement.
If Santorum loses, Spectre should be stripped of his coveted chairmanship.
They will vote R for Gov, just leave senate vote blank or Libertarian.
I'm just wondering where you got those numbers.
Does this mean that Democrats voted in the Republican primary, so that they could defeat Laffey, then changed their affiliation after the primary so they could go back to voting Democrat in the General Election?
If Laffey was such a bad candidate in the general election, why did so many Democrats do so much to defeat him?
Yes...but for one time, they might be right. I'm usually on your side, I supported Specter over Toomey, for example. But in this case, Chafee really ISN'T really better then his opponent.
Chafee isn't good on ANY issue, AND he's threatened to leave the party before. I've been saying he makes Arlen Specter look like Helms, and that's a very accurate description.
I guess he's better then the other guy, because he'll 'probably' vote for an R majority leader, and he'll 'probably' not fillibuster judges. But so far, those are the only things he's done right, and he doesn't have to keep doing them.
But he is literally worthless on everything else. He didn't even vote for Bush in 2004 and said so publically (he wrote in GHWBush, saying he was a 'great president' because he violated his 'no new taxes' pledge and signed the clean water act).
I don't really care much who wins in RI. The only way I'd care is if it'll split 50/50, then we are going to have to have some major gut checks, hoping Chafee won't switch.
If I lived in RI, I'd vote dem or 3rd party. how much more to the left it get?
No, it means independents voted in the R primary. Independents outnumber Rs or Ds in RI, and they like Chafee.
Chafee probably will win the general. I don't see what that gains us, unless the Senate is split 50/50, (and even then, maybe not) but he probably will.
As to Chafee well he is the nominee and we need to support him. He is my least favorite to say the least of the Senate but if his vote in 06 or more importantly in 08 keeps the Senate under Republican leadership then it worth the effort.
Absentee.
How nice for you. Come visit sometime; you'll hardly recognize the place.
It's purists with attitudes like yours that makes fighting the WOT ten times harder.
I'd crawl on my hands and knees over broken glass to pull the lever for any Republican just to keep the Democrats from gaining power to destroy this great country of ours.
Why thank you, Lex. I was just there a month ago.
Why you you :)
(of course, I'll be voting for him too)
When the party prefers to attract independents OVER the base, you have a major problem.
It's an either/or and the or is unthinkable.
If you consider "valuable" the fact that you don't have to have loyalty to be supported. That's the only lesson he learned.
Hope you liked the visit. We just spent an few extra $billion sprucing up the place. I particularly like the festive green, white and red bunting everywhere.
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