Chafee's Campaign

As a Rhode Islander, I have to point out here that while Chafee is in fact a centrist, and I personally would like to vote for him, the main reason many Rhode Islanders are turning to the Democratic alternative is the current Rebpublican stranglehold on all but 1 of the branches of government... and they are starting to gain a foothold there.

Rhode Island has already seen the problems associated with having 1 party (in our case, the Democrats) controlling the state-level government for too long. We have had enormous corruption scandals in the past which have knocked out one corrupt Speaker or Majority leader, just to see another rise to take his place.

Back in 2004, Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly (over 74%) supported a Common Cause of Rhode Island-backed ballot initiative, ammending out state constitution to enumerate our Separation of Powers... thus preventing the heavilly Democratic General Assembly from appointing its own members to state comissions and review boards. This was a huge step for us in cleaning up some of the corruption in our state.

However, Rhode Islanders are not satisfied with simply maintaining a status quo that has obviously not worked for our state. While I am certainly by no means guarenteeing or even endorsing a Sheldon Whitehouse win, Sen. Chafee could easily defeat his candidacy by running as an independent instead of a Republican. The Republican party is still associated with the issues that Chafee has voted against time and time again... he is derided as "RINO" on the Hill, and the only reason the Republicans tollerae him is that he is the only legitimate Republican candidate in Rhode island, and he helps them maintain their majority.

Thus, even if Sen. Chafee does vote along centrist lines more often than not, he still helps maintain a conservative lock on the Senate by simply holding the (R-RI) next to his name. He votes independently, and there's no reason he couldn't trounce Mr. Whitehouse in a state where there is a larger percentage of Unaffiliated voters than either Republicans or Democrats.

Independents can win in Rhode Island, so why shouldn't they?

Trust me though, there's no way that the centrist Republicans and Unaffiliated voters in Rhode Island (who can easily switch parties to vote in primaries) will let a more Neo-Con modeled Republican candidate like Mayor Laffey of Cranston take down Sen. Chafee before the general election. Even Karl Rove is supporting Chafee, becase he knows Laffey has zero chance of winning in a Rhode Island general election, and he wants to maintain the Republican majority more than he wants to agree with the Senator holding that seat.