Agreed, but supporting Lafee over Chafee would have stuck to principle. Support for Chafee added to the (correct) impression that Republicans this year were more interested in holding on to power than in doing the right thing. That hurt us in other races, including the ones you mention.
Exactly.
With one move after another they said "SCREW YOU", we're going to protect our frat club over principle. That's bad enough, what is worse is that they were too dimwitted to understand if the Senate split Chafee was never going to stay. He'd take the perks offered by the Dems and become the power broker Jeffords had hoped to be.
Instead of protecting that useless weasel they could have supported Laffey or at least stayed out of it. Sending a signal if you walk too far from the principled line, you hang on your own. That would have given people out there a sense maybe they did place some principles above themselves and sent a much needed lesson to the other RINO's. The problem is most of them are RINO's that have no principle and take stands only as they believe is necessary to win re-election. Chafee was NO Leiberman. Leiberman voted 98% with his party. Leiberman actually supported his own Presidential candidate. Chafee did absolutely nothing.
And yet their brilliance led them to target states like R.I. and N.J. instead of Florida, West Virginia and other states we could have reasonably taken had they kept their promises to the American people. What state are we going to target next? Mass? California? I wouldn't be surprised if they ignored the winnable states and focused on those instead.
People say we can't win without RINO's. Like Hell. There are about 60 seats to be had in states we've won, but becaue we cater to the minority Liberals in the caucus the party image becomes a liability and we LOSE in the winnable states AND the liberal states.