From the Hill:
The battle between the conservative, pro-tax-cuts Club for Growth and the centrist
Republican Main Street Partnership erupted in Rhode Island yesterday when the Club endorsed Cranston, R.I., Mayor Stephen Laffey, who is challenging Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) in a GOP primary, and Main Street supported Chafee.
The Club also went head to head with Main Street in Pennsylvania last year, when then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R) challenged Sen. Arlen Specter (R) from the right.
Now Toomey is the Club’s president, and Rhode Island looks to be the Pennsylvania of 2006.
The Club endorsed Laffey yesterday. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Toomey called the mayor a Reagan Republican and said Chafee “epitomizes the GOP’s waning commitment to limited-government economic freedom.”
Main Street’s executive director, Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, deplored the divisiveness of the primary and questioned Laffey’s commitment to tax cuts, saying he had backed a 13 percent supplemental property-tax increase on homeowners.
