Free Republic

PROVIDENCE, R.I.--If Lincoln Chafee has one thing going for him in his upcoming primary, it's fear--and don't think this perennial thorn in the GOP's side doesn't know it. In a recent debate against his more conservative primary challenger, he made the choice clear to voters: "Who can win in November?" Rhode Island's few Republicans have been thinking of little else ever since Steve Laffey, the pork-busting mayor of Cranston, challenged the Senate's most liberal Republican to a showdown. The duel has forced upon them one of the more noteworthy choices in this year's election. Do they renominate Mr. Chafee, whose...

There is yet another reason to send Lincoln Chafee into retirement this year. In light of the recent attacks on Israel it is important to point out a little known fact about Senator Chafee. Aside from being the only Republican to oppose Bush's reelection, the Iraq war, and the nomination of Justice Alito, Chafee also holds the distinction of being the only Republican Senator who is pro Palestinian. The Providence Journal reported several months ago that Israel has become a divisive issue between the pro Palestinian Chafee and the ardently pro Israel challenger Steve Laffey. In regard to Chaffe they...

national Republican political committee that supports Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee yesterday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against the senator's Republican primary opponent, Stephen P. Laffey, accusing the two-term Cranston mayor of using taxpayer money to advance his Senate campaign. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a group of Republican senators chaired by Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, claims that a letter from Laffey sent to Cranston residents last month with their tax bills was "a promotional campaign mailing at city taxpayer expense," according to a statement from the NRSC. A campaign spokeswoman for Laffey called the complaint "ridiculous and frivolous."

Next week is a big one for Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island: He must decide whether he's going to run for re-election as a Republican or as an independent. The deadline is 4 pm on Wednesday — almost exactly a week from right now. If Chafee doesn't believe he can win the GOP primary against challenger Steven Laffey, he may decide to forgo the whole thing and create a three-way race between himself, Laffey, and presumptive Democratic nominee Sheldon Whitehouse. This would create an interesting dilemma for Elizabeth Dole and the NRSC, which has already pumped a lot of...

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll of the race for the U.S. Senate in Rhode Island shows Senator Lincoln Chafee (R) still neck-and-neck with former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse (D), nominally besting him by 44% to 42%. In late April, Chafee could only boast a mere three-point edge.

The Marriage Amendment and Chafee in Rhode Island Yesterday the Senate defeated by a vote of 49-48 a motion for cloture on the Marriage Amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. That motion for cloture needed 60 votes to pass, following which the Amendment would have gone on to a debate and vote in the Senate again, where it would then need a vote count of 67 in the affirmative to send it on to the states for ratification. All of the Left and the media, and many on the right, decry the vote...

The conservative Club for Growth has released highlights of a poll that shows Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in a statistical dead heat with his Republican primary challenger, Stephen P. Laffey. The Washington-based group, which has endorsed Laffey, said its survey of 300 very likely Republican primary voters showed that Chafee would get 45.7 of the vote if the election ``were held today'' and Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, would get 44.3 percent

Sen. Chafee's Wife Tries to Save Re-Election Campaign by Ivy J. SellersPosted Apr 21, 2006Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee's re-election odds are looking so bleak his wife Stephanie has sent a letter asking friends registered as Democrats to switch their party affiliations to Republican or Independent in order to support him in the Republican primary. Chafee, who has continually voted with Democrats on key issues, has been the subject of attack from his first days in office as he refuses to support initiatives important to his GOP constituents.

From the Steve Laffey for U.S. Senate campaign: Dear All, Please read the following--it is truly outrageous. Below you will find a letter Stephanie Chafee (Lincoln Chafee's wife) emailed to registered Democrats URGING them to disaffiliate and register as Independents or Republicans so that they can vote for Senator Chafee in the Republican primary on September 12th. Included are the attachments Mrs. Chafee sent along with her email instructing voters HOW and WHERE to disaffiliate. This is a blatant attempt by the Chafee campaign to HIJACK the Republican primary, and further proof that Senator Chafee does not represent even moderate...

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,...

...Does a woman who accepts America's money to build democracy deserve 16 years in prison? Only to a brutal dictator. But that doesn't excuse Congress, NOW and Jimmy Carter for having nothing to say. ...a politicized court is about to throw Venezuelan democracy campaigner Maria Corina Machado into prison for "treason." Her so-called crime: Accepting a $54,000 grant from U.S. Congress' National Endowment for Democracy. ...all she and three others did was inform citizens about their supposed rights under Chavez's own 1999 constitution. For Chavez, that was a crime.. his prosecutor handed the one-man judge and jury his demand for...

Describing his 1976 challenge to incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan wrote, "It was time to scale back the size of the federal government, reduce taxes and government intrusion in our lives, balance the budget, and return to the people the freedoms usurped from them by the bureaucrats." Reagan helped define the mission of the Republican Party. By re-establishing limited government as the central principle of the GOP, he laid the groundwork for the political revolution that bears his name. Almost 30 years later, the Republican Party is at a similar defining moment. Once again, challengers to certain Republican...

RUSH: Try this headline in the Boston Globe today: "GOP Embracing its Maverick." I said, "Oh, is the GOP getting friendlier with McCain?" Then the subhead says, "Tough Race Makes Chafee an Asset." You know, this Specter experience is a mistake. Why do you keep repeating history here? "Senator Lincoln Chafee hopped out of the driver's seat of his beige Toyota Prius..." I was really hooked after that line. "Senator Lincoln Chafee hopped out of the driver's seat of his beige Toyota Prius, a car with a dent on the side and 'I am electric' blazoned across the back window,...

The NRSC quickly waded into US Senator Linc Chafee's 2006 re-election race. The party organization is already running harsh TV spots in the state attacking investment banker and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, Chafee's conservative GOP primary opponent. The commercials try to tie Laffey to the unpopular oil industry and high gas prices, blasting Laffey for having previously run "a company selling oil industry stocks on Wall Street. Profiting from offshore oil drilling. The oil companies made a fortune. Steve Laffey made a fortune."

WARWICK -- On a dead-end street pinched between T.F. Green Airport and the Amtrak rail line, U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee squints into the sun as he looks over a field of overgrown grass and rusting trucks, the kind of fenced-off wasteland where mobsters might dump a body in a movie. Chafee has eyed this lot, where a chemical company once stood, since he was mayor of Warwick, and his father, the late U.S. Sen. John Chafee, squeezed the first drip of federal money to clean up the land and make plans for a new train station.

A group of Republicans statewide has organized a committee to encourage Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey to challenge Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in 2006. There are 85 names on a letter given to Laffey yesterday, including 2000 gubernatorial candidate James Bennett, Cranston state Representatives Carol Mumford and James F. Davey, East Providence Mayor Joseph Larisa and members of city and town councils, party members and business people. Former Cranston Republican City Committee Chairman Gary Vierra said that he and others -- mostly members of the Cranston GOP -- were behind the effort, which was launched two weeks ago. Vierra said...

former Rep. Toomey (R-Pa.) said he had spoken in recent weeks with Laffey about running against centrist Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.)

How often do you read a statement from a politician and think, “That speaks for me”? That seldom, huh? Anyway, I felt this way when reading an excerpt from a letter sent by Sen. Mitch McConnell to the Louisville Courier-Journal: “Why is it that whenever a Democrat speaks before a religious audience, he is ‘reaching out,’ but when a Republican does it, he is ‘divisive’? . . . I can recall many instances of Democrats visiting churches over the years, not just to speak on a policy matter but even to outright plea for votes. Either I’ve missed the angry...

The John Bolton nomination would have already gone through if not for the actions of Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel. The Democratic Party has conducted itself in a shameful manner with regard to its scrutiny of John Bolton. This, of course, hardly comes as a surprise given the Democrats propensity for obstructing President Bush’s judicial nominees, or conduct with respect to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. These days the Democrats are more of a high school clique than a loyal opposition. However, in the case of John Bolton, Democrats would not have been able to take their shenanigans...

Democrats trying to sink the nomination of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador scored a big victory yesterday, when Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, declared himself unready to back the nominee. The Dems' efforts to beat Bolton on ideological grounds--that he's too pro-American and has "disdain" for the U.N.--having failed, they turned to that old standby, the politics of personal destruction. Voinovich's concern for the Golden Rule is certainly touching, but does it apply to air traffic controllers? What prompts the question is an incident that occurred in 1995, when he was...