GOP kisses up to liberal Chafee

Five years, two wars and more than $1 trillion in budget deficits later, Chafee is still trying to muster arguments to justify his party allegiance. After the lunch in Cranston, I asked the embattled incumbent how -- given his views -- he could justify voting with the Republicans to determine which party controls the Senate and gets to choose committee chairmen. "The only way my vote is significant is if it's 50-50," Chafee responded. "Otherwise, it's irrelevant. And that possibility seems remote as you look ahead at the races." (With the Democrats running well against Republican incumbents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana and Missouri, the statistical possibility of deadlock is not nearly as far-fetched as Chafee suggested.)

During our interview, Chafee made clear that he walked a careful line within the Republican Party, dissenting without becoming a true apostate. "I've worked very hard -- knowing that my voting record is not with my party leadership or the administration -- to have good relations," he said. "Otherwise, you couldn't deliver for Rhode Island. Now, in turn, they're helping me in this election."

How, exactly, I asked, do you work with the administration?

Chafee's description of consciously pulling his punches was as revealing as his syntax was muddled: "Taking that step in my rhetoric too far might be what I've always been careful about. Voting against a bill, sure, I might like to tee off on a certain issue. But that might not be productive to other votes down the road, other positions I might have to take down the road, any help I might need from somebody down the road. So I think I've done a good job of stating my positions, but not taking that step too far either in rhetoric or action."

Monday night in the midst of a driving rain, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, wearing a green windbreaker over an open-necked blue shirt, stood under a pavilion roof in Manville Park in Lincoln presiding over a hamburger cookout for 150 voters. According to his official count, this was Whitehouse's 31st outdoor event of the year. "You've heard about six degrees of separation," Whitehouse said to me. "It's two degrees of separation in Rhode Island. It makes the politics a lot more personal and I think a lot less amenable to outside influences."

In marked contrast to Chafee, the Democratic nominee portrays Rhode Island as the tipping point for control of the Senate. "It is absolutely essential that we win this Senate seat in Rhode Island to take back the Senate," Whitehouse declared in his stump speech in Lincoln. "And if we take back the Senate, things will change. We will have a real platform to push hard to get our troops home from Iraq ... We need to just say no to George Bush."

Up to now, Whitehouse has been running a generic Democratic campaign filled with the party's familiar buzzwords. His initial 60-second biographical ad (created by Tad Devine and Mike Donilon from Bob Shrum's old firm) was filled with gauzy images of the candidate talking to voters as the voice-over featured boilerplate lines like, "Sheldon Whitehouse will be a senator who will work ... for real solutions to the toughest problems facing our families, our seniors and our kids. For our seniors, fixing the new Medicare prescription drug plan, so it helps people, not the big drug companies."

This strategy might be effective against a typical Republican, but it is much harder to brandish these familiar weapons against Chafee, who cannot be easily demonized as the political frontman for drug companies or the oil industry. As a Rhode Island Democratic operative, who is not affiliated with the Whitehouse campaign, put it, "A Democrat running unopposed for six months as the Republicans go after each other on TV should be up by 10 points in the polls. And Sheldon is not -- he's running even with Chafee. And that worries me if Chafee wins the primary."

In our interview, Whitehouse, who comes from a similarly elite background as the incumbent senator, acknowledged the peculiar personal contours of a race against Chafee. "You have to make people understand that this election is not about Lincoln Chafee," he said. "I personally like Lincoln Chafee. The Whitehouse family and the Chafee family have been very close. His son Caleb and my son Alexander are classmates. His father and my father were classmates at Yale."

For Whitehouse and Democratic hopes in Rhode Island, it all comes down to the mantra: It's the control of the Senate, stupid. As Whitehouse put it, "Both Lincoln Chafee and Steve Laffey are going to go down to Washington and vote for Mitch McConnell for majority leader and the whole team of committee chairs. And every other vote they're going to take is going to be overwhelmed by that vote."

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