RI-Sen: Laffey of too a strong start.

[12th Doctor]

Chafee challengers raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Candidates hoping to unseat Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee in next yea's U.S. Senate race have each reported raising hundreds of thousands of dollars so far.

Stephen Laffey, a Republican, reported nearly $380,000 in campaign contributions since entering the Senate race a month ago, according to a survey of the 2006 Senate candidates taken by The Providence Journal.

Laffey said he now has almost $600,000, which includes a personal loan, in his campaign war chest.

"We're off to a powerful start," Laffey said.

Among Democrats, former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse said he received about $600,000 in the fund-raising quarter that ended Sept. 30. Whitehouse, who declared his candidacy at the end of March, has more than $1.3 million in cash on hand.

Secretary of State Matt Brown took in more than $400,000 in the third quarter and has about $600,000 total in the bank.

Laffey and Whitehouse have loaned their campaigns about $360,000.

Chafee did not report his third-quarter fund-raising totals for the newspaper's survey. But he raised more than $500,000 in the first two quarters of 2005 combined.

The candidates are required to file public reports about their campaign contributions later this month.

Jennifer Duffy, an analyst of Senate races for The Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., cautioned against making too much of Laffey's success in quickly raising a large amount of money.

"Your first quarter should be the easiest," Duffy told the Journal. "This is when you get all your friends to help. This is when you make 100 calls and get 99 yeses. After this, it gets much harder."

Chafee was appointed to the Senate in 1999 to fill the vacancy created when his father, Sen. John Chafee, died. He won a full term in 2000 and is seeking re-election.

Well, if this guy wins, I hope the GOP is prepared the "Laffey" off the huge pummeling we are going to take in Rhode Island come election time.

[12th Doctor]

chafee is going to kick laffey's ass. 

I don't know how it'll work in the primary but here's hoping Laffey atleast gives the RINO a good run.

Phil, did it ever occure to you that Chaffee is the only kind of Republican that can get elected in many parts of the country, so it is better off him than no one?  Anyone more conservative than Chaffee is going to get creamed in RI.  Laffey has no chance.  At least with Chaffee, we have a better chance of holding our majority in the Senate.

Not to mention that I don;t really have a problem with Chaffee.  For a Seantor from RI, he represents his state with about as well as can be hoped for, which is what he is there for.

[12th Doctor]

chafee is going to kick laffey's ass. 

I don't know how it'll work in the primary but here's hoping Laffey atleast gives the RINO a good run.

Phil, did it ever occure to you that Chaffee is the only kind of Republican that can get elected in many parts of the country, so it is better off him than no one?  Anyone more conservative than Chaffee is going to get creamed in RI.  Laffey has no chance.  At least with Chaffee, we have a better chance of holding our majority in the Senate.

Not to mention that I don;t really have a problem with Chaffee.  For a Seantor from RI, he represents his state with about as well as can be hoped for, which is what he is there for.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe I am not just blindly standing by someone because of their party? Did it ever occur to you that maybe the beliefs of a candidate are more important to me? Yes, this race is a tough one. Chafee is really the type of candidate the party needs up there. However, the fact remains that he is a RINO and I am not standing by him when he has a more conservative challenger.

And to totally destroy your argument about anyone more conservative than Chafee getting creamed, have you have taken a look at their Governor?

To say Laffey has no chance is foolish.

Carcieri ran in the Republican year of 2002, first off.  Even if we make gains in Senate in 06, it will be just because of dumb luck.  Secondly, he ran against corruption in the state government and on a set of issues that are not national in scope.

Second, I'm not asking you to vote blindly for party, I am asking you to look at the bigger picture.  If the Democrats take back control of the Senate, then the bills coming to the floor are going to look a lot different than what we have now, because the Democrats will control the committees.  It doesn't matter if they have 50 seats or 55, this will be the case.  Think of a Senate Judiciary Committee Controled by Teddy Kennedy, cause that is what we are going to get.

Third, at least with Chafee, we get what we want half the time (more than half for me, since I am not a strict conservative).  If a Democrat gets in there, he might vote with us... 15% of the time.  If that.

Laffey won't win, Phil.  Even if he has the appeal to win, the national party is not going to waste money financing him when they can spend it on Kennedy, Santorum and Talent.

[12th Doctor]

You said someone more conservative than Chafee can't win. The truth is that conservatives can win. Would it be an uphill battle? Yes. Impossible? No.

State races are often quite different from national ones.  I think that if you had learned one thing in the past two years, that would be it.  A national candidate is going to be forced to run on a different set of issues.  The abortion issue is going to be the only winner for us in RI, but the Democrats will do what they can to take focus away from that.

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Phil, if you don't think that the Republican Party is in trouble for '06, then I don't know what to tell you.  Yes, it is true that a number of Senate Democrats have low approval ratings right now, but that doesn't mean we are going to be able to find candidates that can take them out, and so far, we haven't.  Meanwhile, the media is not giving us a break on Iraq.  We are probably going to need to take action against Iran, which is going to increase the warwaeriness of the public.  Several of our key Senators are looking vulnerable, including Talent and Santorum.  The pro-war base and John Ford types are getting anxious because of problems with our forign policy.  The social conservative base is angry over Miers (Rush Limbaugh, Bob Novak and others are not helping much).  And we still can't convince the moderates to join us over the Democrats.  The divides in the country keep getting bigger, regardless of who is to blame, while we might not be losing, we aren't winning either, and as the majority party, we are going to take the blame for the lack of unitey in this country, whether that is fair or not.

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How?  It isn't like he has stabbed us in the back or anything.  He's doing what he said he was going to do.  Do we really depend on him for anything?  No.

If you don't like Chafee, then I can gurentee you you won't like whatever Kennedy Cadet ends up in there if we go with Laffey.

And, if we get rid of Chafee, it's just going to prove to swing voters that we hav no interest in appealing to them.  It won't help our cause to look just as nasty and mean spirited as the Democrats.

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Phil, it's just common sense.  If we are down 8% in the polls in RI, and have some really close races going on else where, then we aren't going to spend money where it isn't going to do us any good.  Meanwhile, Democrats in RI out number us about 3-5, so they are going to have a better base from which to raise money.

The only thing Laffey would have going for him is that I cannot imagine the Providence air time is too expensive.  But if that helps us, it helps the Dems too.

[12th Doctor]

Yep. We should have backed away from Toomey, too, because we were thumbing our nose at swing voters, right Super?

I knew this was coming.  First off, Toomey could have won here, because PA is not RI and Toomey was not really that conservative to begin with, not as he was portrayed, or as his campaign portrayed him as being.

Secondly, I didn't back Toomey because he was conservative and Specter was a moderate.  I backed Toomey because I liked Toomey and Specter constantly lies about who he is and tries to play both sides.  Chafee is honest about who he is and what he stands for.  Specter is also personally reprehensable.  Chafee is not.

These situations are far too different to be compared to one another.

[12th Doctor]

I know PA and RI are different. I was never just saying that because you don't think Laffey could win that Toomey couldn't have won. I brought up us screwing around with moderate voters which, by supporting Toomey, it seemed like we were doing. Yet now you say Toomey wasn't conservative? Really? I agree he wasn't the far right winger some claimed he was but saying he wasn't really conservative is foolish.

So, again, the point remains that no matter what your reason was for supporting Toomey, people would see that as messing with moderate voters. It was ok to do it here but not in RI?

No, I said Toomey was "not that conservative", meaning he was not some right wing radical, like he was portrayed as.  I supported Toomey, because I liked Toomey, and Specter is a creep, not because I just wanted someone more conservative in there.  I don't have a problem with Chafee, personally, but you just want to get rid of him because he is a "RINO".  If you are looking to build a broad base party that can win nationally, that is not the place to start, esspecially since moderates are less apt to be on our side this year.  As for RI itself, well, we could get every conservative and 7/10 of the moderates in RI to vote for Laffey and we would still lose.

[12th Doctor]

I know PA and RI are different. I was never just saying that because you don't think Laffey could win that Toomey couldn't have won. I brought up us screwing around with moderate voters which, by supporting Toomey, it seemed like we were doing. Yet now you say Toomey wasn't conservative? Really? I agree he wasn't the far right winger some claimed he was but saying he wasn't really conservative is foolish.

So, again, the point remains that no matter what your reason was for supporting Toomey, people would see that as messing with moderate voters. It was ok to do it here but not in RI?

No, I said Toomey was "not that conservative", meaning he was not some right wing radical, like he was portrayed as.  

And Laffey is not as conservative as people are making him out to be.

Phil, that's not my point.  Any conservative is not going to be elected in RI, for the Senate.  It doesn't matter how conservative they are.