First the Democratic left went after and got Joe Lieberman….now the Republican right is going after Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee:
Fresh off their first victory over a Republican incumbent, GOP conservatives seeking party purity on taxes and spending are focused on ousting moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
The Club for Growth and its 36,000 members spent around $1 million to help challenger Tim Walberg unseat first-term Rep. Joe Schwarz in Michigan’s Republican primary on Tuesday. The win came despite Schwarz’s support from President Bush and the National Rifle Association.
Since its inception in 1999, the group has spent millions to help dozens of conservative Republicans win seats in Congress – often at the expense of more moderate party members. The Club’s president, former Rep. Pat Toomey, nearly defeated Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in 2004.
This year, the group’s top priority is defeating Chafee, who angered many Republicans by voting against President Bush’s tax cuts and then casting a write-in vote for the president’s father in the last election. The Club has helped Cranston, R.I., Mayor Stephen Laffey raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat Chafee, and polls show the two Republicans running even a month before the Sept. 12 primary.
The prospect of a Laffey win worries national Republicans, who consider Chafee the party’s best bet for holding the seat in a heavily Democratic state. Polls show Laffey trailing far behind the leading Democratic candidate, former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse.
The Club’s Web site says that’s fine: “It wouldn’t be much of a loss if a new Democrat senator were elected, as he would vote much the same as Chafee does now.”
That about says it all, doesn’t it?
The Lieberman loss and the Chafee battle are likely to mean politicos of both parties are going to be far more careful in the future about adhering to strictly party lines. Some will argue this would be a welcome development for American politics — that party choices would be clearly delineated. Others will argue that it will mean less give and take — less political horse-trading — since politicos of both parties wouldn’t want to be seen as partisan turncoats. Time will tell which theory is correct. Or perhaps it’ll be both…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.