"There is nothing wrong with being concerned about a bad political climate."
There's a huge difference between being concerned about a "bad political climate" and predicting that the Democrats will pick up 5 net Senate seats in 2006 (which is what I referred to as "living in a land of confusion").
As for Laffey's electability in a statewide race, you're right, it's not altogether certain right now. But he has been able to run and win in a city that is as heavily Democrat as the rest of the state (Cranston was 1% less for Bush in 2000 and 2% more for Bush in 2004 than the state as a whole). Besides, his positions are really quite moderate; while he is a "conservative" by RI standards, he's probably not as conservative as Governor Carcieri, who was able to win statewide with 55% in 2002 and will be on the ballot (perhaps providing coattails) in 2006.
But the main reason why I'm not all that worried about whether Laffey is "electable" is that I don't think we lose *anything* if a Democrat replaces Chafee in the Senate (in fact, we gain 2 net Republicans on the committees on which Chafee sits). As I've said before, Chafee is only useful to the GOP in case we only have 50 or 51 Senators, which is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future, and in the odd chance that Chafee was the 50th or 51st Republican he would likely make it official and jump to the Democrats. So I'll take my chances with Laffey.
Well....I beleive your candiate should run ...only if Sen. Chaffee plans to switch political parties then I am with you...if not then let Sen. Chaffee be. The GOP needs to look at seats held by the Dems. and take those instead having Reps. take out Reps. congressional seats.
*Please excuse any spelling errors
lbjgal (Look passed the name...i'm in hiding)