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First of all, the Democrats who are running or might run against Chafee are not as horrible a bunch of candidates as you paint them. If you really felt that way, why wouldn't you enthusiastically support Laffey's Senate bid, since those "two losers" wouldn't be able to win? The truth is that while they are not exactly first-tier candidates, someone who has been elected statewide as a Secretary of State like Matt Brown, and someone who was elected to Congress several times and might actually get pro-life Republican votes this time such as Bob Weygand, are at least Tier 1-A. Had Rhode Islanders known back in 2000 what a tool Lincoln Chafee is, he never would have won in the first place, and I don't think Chafee will be able to get the huge number of Democrat votes he would need to make up for his lack of support among Republicans. Frankly, I think Chafee's best shot at reelection is to switch to the Dems and hope that the DNC will go all-out to protect a party-switcher so that he can win the RAT primary with 40% or so; however, he would still face a tough general election battle from Mayor Laffey, and I think Laffey could win.

BTW, Laffey is not exactly a Jesse Helms conservative, you know. Yes, he's pro-life, but so are many Rhode Island Democrats, and if he can be elected in heavily Democrat Cranston (which only gave Bush 30.99% in 2000 and 40.95% in 2004, so it was 1% more Republican than the state as a whole in 2000 and 2% less Republican than the state in 2004), I fail to see why he would be unelectable in a statewide race.

And, as I have explained before, our optimal strategy would be to kick Chafee off of a sub-committee chairmanship or something so that he makes it official and finally leaves the GOP. I assume that the Democrats would discourage others from running in the Democrat primary against someone who recently switched parties in order not to discourage other RINOs from switching, and I think that a Republican Senate candidate with decent name ID (like Laffey) would have a good chance of defeating Lincoln Chafee in a general election, especially one in which Governor Carcieri is running for reelection.

Chafee sits in the following committees:

1. Foreign Relations (3rd of 10 Republicans and Chairman of the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee)

2. Environment and Public Works (5th of 10 Republicans, and Chairman of the Superfund and Waste Management Subcommittee)

3. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (6th of 9 Republicans)

See: http://www.senate.gov/general/committee_assignments/assignments.htm

I’m certain that the GOP would be able to keep its current 2-seat advantage in these committees even if the number of GOP Senators dropped from 55 to 54. In fact, I believe that this could be accomplished by keeping the same number of Republicans and Democrats in the committee, which, given the fact that Chafee has been an imposter on the GOP side, would mean that the GOP would have a net gain of 2 Republicans on those committees (one fewer de facto Democrat and one more real Republican). If the size of the committees was kept the same but Chafee became a Democrat member of the committees, it would benefit the GOP particularly in the Foreign Relations Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, in which Chafee has seniority and would certainly be given a spot by the Democrats. The lowest-ranking Democrat—in fact, the only first-year Democrat—in each of those committees is one Barack Obama. The Democrats won’t want to drop their “rising star” Obama from those two committees, but none of the other Democrats with more seniority will give up without a fight. Republicans could just sit back and enjoy the show.

But if, instead, the Democrats insisted on each of those committees adding 2 members with the GOP still having a 2-vote advantage (which could happen, since it would mean that the GOP would have closer to 54% of the members of those committees as opposed to a bit over 55%), then the GOP would still have a pickup of two real Republicans. Chafee would join the other Democrats on the committee, but 2 real Republicans would be added to the committee. Obama would stay put, but we would have much stronger control of the agenda of the committees than we currently do.

So we would immediately gain power in Senate committees, would improve our chances of having a real Republican elected in Rhode Island, and would send a message to other RINOs not to take the GOP's conservative base for granted. I think it would be a win-win-win.