For those Providence residents who haven’t made a decision on who they will be voting for in tommorow’s Maoyral primary, here’s a quick summary of Part 2 of Dan Harrop‘s and Dave Talan‘s appearance on WPRI-TV Channel 12‘s Newmakers program from September 3. Both gentleman gave articulate and detailed answers to each question that was asked. If you have the time, the original video (segments 2 and 3) is worth watching…
Steve Aveson asks Dave Talan why Dan Harrop shouldn’t be the Republican candidate for mayor of Providence?
Talan says he’d prefer to make the case for himself instead. He has 35 years as a neighborhood activist, has worked on crime watch, traffic and open space issues in Providence, is President of the Elmwood little league, was an assistant to a state representative, and served 12 years on Providence board of park commissioners. If he is elected Mayor, “there will be no learning curve”.
Aveson notes that, despite his admirable record, Talan has not been elected in the past, then asks Harrop what he will do to get elected.
Harrop: Cicilline can lose this election, if people realize that another 4 years of Cicilline will mean more failing schools and higher taxes. Harrop cites his experience in on the workers compensation commission and in developing programs to keep drunk drivers of the roads through the DOT and says his background in education and administration has given him skills that the current mayor lacks. Harrop goes on to criticize Talan‘s voucher plan, saying $4,000 is too small an amount and private schools do not have excess capacity. “The voucher system is useless”.
Talan rebuts that $4,000 is an actual figure for the cost of a parochial school elementary education. He worked with an administrator from Saint Pius and the finance chair of the Diocese of Providence to determine the number. Obviously $4,000 doesn’t cover schools like LaSalle or Moses Brown, but it would make a difference in areas like the South Side. Since a public school education costs $12,600-per-pupil, the voucher plan will save $8,600 per student. Multiply by 10,000 students, and that’s a huge savings.
Ian Donnis asks why there are so many city council races in Providence.
Harrop says Mayor Cicilline has encouraged primaries because he can’t work with his own city council. He wants “rubber stamp surrogates” elected to the city council.
Aveson asks (skeptically) if a Republican could be expected to do a better job with a Democratic city council.
Harrop: Yes, I can collaborate and work with people.
Donnis asks Talan about the Democratic primaries.
Talan says he can’t speak for Democrats, but can take credit for recruiting candidates for 23 different races on the Republican side. The competition will result in better government for the city of Providence.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
- The first segment of this debate is available here.
- An Anchor Rising interview with Dan Harrop is available here.
- An Anchor Rising interview with Dave Talan is available here.
For those Providence residents who haven’t made a decision on who they will be voting for in tommorow�s Maoyral primary, here’s a quick summary of Part 1 of Dan Harrop‘s and Dave Talan‘s appearance on WPRI-TV Channel 12‘s Newmakers program from September 3. Both gentleman gave articulate and detailed answers to each question that was asked. If you have the time, the original video (segments 2 and 3) is worth watching…
Steve Aveson asks Dan Harrop what the biggest issues facing Providence are.
Harrop answers failing schools and higher taxes. Every middle school is failing, as are 10 of 25 elementary schools. There has been a 14% tax increase in 2 years, with another 11% planned for next year.
Aveson suggests that Providence Mayor David Cicilline would say that his removal of principals form middle schools shows that he is serious about education reform.
Harrop questions the value of removing principals after one year. Since Providence has an appointed school committee, the Mayor has ultimate responsibility for failing schools.
Aveson asks Dave Talan about his sense of the biggest problems facing Providence.
Talan says he agrees with Harrop; the biggest problems are education, taxes and spending. 8,000 of 36,000 Providence students have left the public school system. A $4000-per-year school voucher would allow another 10,000 the freedom to leave. A voucher system would reduce overcrowding, end “musical chairs forced busing”, improve public education, restore neighborhood schools and save between 25-50 million dollars. Talan says he would also work at reducing spending, eliminating unfunded mandates and reforming the pension system.
Ian Donnis asks why Mayor Ciciline lacks a primary opponent, if he’s done such a bad job.
Harrop says he’s not sure about Democratic intra-party politics, but respected city council members like John Lombardi and Rita Williams are on record opposing the Mayor.
Donnis suggests that Cicilline would say he faces resistance because he is more forward thinking than his opponents.
Harrop: John Lombardi and Rita Willams have been excellent reps.
Donnis asks Talan why Cicilline has no primary opponent.
Talan answers that Cicilline he has two credible opponents on the Republican side. Talan adds that Cicilline is good on ethical issues, and the Providence has seen some economic growth because the businesses confident they don’t need to pay bribes or make campaign contributions to operate in Providence.
Aveson: You’re saying Cicilline is a good politican but a bad administrator?
Harrop replies that Cicilline has shown he can’t collaborate with people. He walked out after just 5 minutes of a meeting with the Governor on education funding, which did not serve the interests of the people of Providence.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
- The second segment of this debate is available here.
- An Anchor Rising interview with Dan Harrop is available here.
- An Anchor Rising interview with Dave Talan is available here.
Anchor Rising had the opportunity to interview Dave Talan — Republican candidate for mayor of Providence — about his candidacy and his plans for improving the City of Providence. Mr. Talan’s plan is based on the idea that the focus should be on cutting spending, rather than raising taxes�
Anchor Rising: How is your campaign going?
Dave Talan: I’ve always said that one of the signs of success in building the Republican party organization in Providence would be when we started having primaries. I just never dreamed the first one would be against myself!
Certainly education is the #1 issue. There are 36,000 students of school age, kindergarten through grade 12, in the city of Providence. 8,000, a staggering number, have already left the public school system to go to private or parochial schools. I believe that there are another 10,000 that would leave in an instant, if only they could afford the tuition.
The total cost to go to one of those schools is only about $4,000, with the parish or the diocese subsidizing the cost, whereas it costs $12,600 to educate every child who remains behind in the public school system. This is a real opportunity to save money for the city and to provide a better education for everybody.
My main issue is making available a $4,000-per-year school voucher for every child that wants to leave the public school system. I believe that, in the end, we’d have 18,000 students in the public school system and 18,000 in the parochial system, saving 25 million to 50 million dollars for the taxpayers, giving a better education to the students, and really benefiting the kids who stayed behind in the public school system. We’d reduce overcrowding. Since there really isn’t enough space for all these kids right now, we end up with musical-chairs forced busing where kids from my neighborhood (Reservoir Triangle) can’t go to the neighborhood school. They get bussed to Robert F. Kennedy in Elmhurst, while you’ve got kids from other neighborhoods being bused into my neighborhood. That’s total insanity.
If my plan went into effect, we’d eliminate that. Every kid could go to the public school in their own neighborhood. We’d introduce competition, so the teacher’s unions couldn’t refuse to attend PTA meetings or have parent teacher conferences for not getting paid overtime. It would really improve things right there.
As I head off this morning to New York City for the day, it is hard not to reflect on what happened there five years ago today.
In I Just Called to Say I Love You: The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar, Peggy Noonan reflects on what we learned about the human spirit during that most difficult time:
…I think too about the sounds that came from within the buildings and within the planes–the phone calls and messages left on answering machines, all the last things said to whoever was home and picked up the phone. They awe me, those messages.
Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, “I never liked you,” or, “You hurt my feelings.” No one negotiated past grievances or said, “Vote for Smith.” Amazingly –or not–there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying “I hate them.”
No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor. When you read the transcripts that have been released over the years it’s all so clear.
Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband: “Please tell my children that I love them very much. I’m sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again.”
Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Harrington, a California-based trade consultant at a meeting in the towers, called her father to say she loved him. Minutes later she left a message on the answering machine as her new husband slept in their San Francisco home. “Sean, it’s me, she said. “I just wanted to let you know I love you.”
Capt. Walter Hynes of the New York Fire Department’s Ladder 13 dialed home that morning as his rig left the firehouse at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He was on his way downtown, he said in his message, and things were bad. “I don’t know if we’ll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids.”
Firemen don’t become firemen because they’re pessimists. Imagine being a guy who feels in his gut he’s going to his death, and he calls on the way to say goodbye and make things clear. His widow later told the Associated Press she’d played his message hundreds of times and made copies for their kids. “He was thinking about us in those final moments.”
Elizabeth Rivas saw it that way too. When her husband left for the World Trade Center that morning, she went to a laundromat, where she heard the news. She couldn’t reach him by cell and rushed home. He’d called at 9:02 and reached her daughter. The child reported, “He say, mommy, he say he love you no matter what happens, he loves you.” He never called again. Mrs. Rivas later said, “He tried to call me. He called me.”
There was the amazing acceptance. I spoke this week with a medical doctor who told me she’d seen many people die, and many “with grace and acceptance.” The people on the planes didn’t have time to accept, to reflect, to think through; and yet so many showed the kind of grace you see in a hospice.
Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. “I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building,” he said. “Don’t worry, Dad–if it happens, it will be very fast.” On the same flight, Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they’d been hijacked. “Hopefully I’ll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I’ll see you again some day.”
There was Tom Burnett’s famous call from United Flight 93. “We’re all going to die, but three of us are going to do something,” he told his wife, Deena. “I love you, honey.”
These were people saying, essentially, In spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were “accepting the inevitable” and taking care of “unfinished business.” “At death’s door people pass on a responsibility–‘Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.’ ‘Take care of Mom.’ ‘Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven’t been very good.’ ” They address what needs doing.
This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he’d never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were “old friends,” she later wrote. They said the Lord’s Prayer together. Then he said “Let’s roll.”
This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they’d guess. And this: We’re all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won’t make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.
I think the sound of the last messages, of what was said, will live as long in human history, and contain within it as much of human history, as any old metallic roar.
A beautiful testimony to the strength of the human spirit.
Our thoughts and prayers go out again to all of the families who lost loved ones on that horrible day. And our thanks go out to those many Americans who joined in numerous efforts to save lives and take care of the injured and grieving.
We salute all of you with pride, gratitude, and a commitment to never let your memory, bravery and acts of kindness be forgotten.
In a comment to the Part I posting, Joe Mahn writes:
…From my simple perspective and I think in the context of the actual events of the time religious freedom meant that no State in the Union under the Constitution could force, by law, any citizen to participate in, confess, or otherwise practice any particular State sanctioned or preferred religion. It would also forbid the creation of a State religion with attendant threats of incarceration or imposition of any punishment upon said citizens.
The objective of these freedoms was to allow citizens to believe what they wanted with no interference from the State as well as guarantee that States not mandate one religion, or sect within a religion, over another.
From that point going forward governments across the land, from municipal to federal, acknowledged God, His laws, and many other events and rituals of the Christian faith with little or no dissent. That all changed in the late 1940’s when the US Supreme Court violated the Constitution by interfering in the rights of the sovereign states and prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
It’s been all downhill from there….
Let’s give a specific example of how much things have changed in our understanding of the relationship between the State and religion over the last 50 years: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was know as a very liberal justice of the court. Yet, in Zorach v. Clauson, a 1952 case, he wrote for the Court with these words:
New York City has a program which permits its public schools to release students during the school day so that they may leave the school buildings and school grounds and go to religious centers for religious instruction or devotional exercises. A student is released on written request of his parents. Those not released stay in the classrooms. The churches make weekly reports to the schools, sending a list of children who have been released from public school but who have not reported for religious instruction…
It takes obtuse reasoning to inject any issue of the “free exercise” of religion into the present case. No one is forced to go to the religious classroom, and no religious exercise or instruction is brought to the classrooms of the public schools. A student need not take religious instruction. He is left to his own desires as to the manner or time of his religious devotions, if any…
Moreover…we do not see how New York by this type of “released time” program has made a law respecting an establishment of religion within the meaning of the First Amendment…
And so far as interference with the “free exercise” of religion and an “establishment” of religion are concerned, the separation must be complete and unequivocal. The First Amendment within the scope of its coverage permits no exception; the prohibition is absolute. The First Amendment, however, does not say that, in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rather, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other — hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. Churches could not be required to pay even property taxes. Municipalities would not be permitted to render police or fire protection to religious groups. Policemen who helped parishioners into their places of worship would violate the Constitution. Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; “so help me God” in our courtroom oaths — these and all other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting the First Amendment. A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which the Court opens each session: “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
We would have to press the concept of separation of Church and State to these extremes to condemn the present law on constitutional grounds. The nullification of this law would have wide and profound effects. A Catholic student applies to his teacher for permission to leave the school during hours on a Holy Day of Obligation to attend a mass. A Jewish student asks his teacher for permission to be excused for Yom Kippur. A Protestant wants the afternoon off for a family baptismal ceremony. In each case, the teacher requires parental consent in writing. In each case, the teacher, in order to make sure the student is not a truant, goes further and requires a report from the priest, the rabbi, or the minister. The teacher, in other words, cooperates in a religious program to the extent of making it possible for her students to participate in it. Whether she does it occasionally for a few students, regularly for one, or pursuant to a systematized program designed to further the religious needs of all the students does not alter the character of the act.
We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person. But we find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence…
But we cannot expand it to cover the present released time program unless separation of Church and State means that public institutions can make no adjustments of their schedules to accommodate the religious needs of the people. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.
How things change. Today, we hear examples of how a Christian student club cannot even meet after school on school property – while a gay & lesbian student club can. The issue for many of us is not the latter club’s ability to meet. Rather, it is the exclusion of the former club’s ability to meet.
Unfortunately, in yet another tribute to our lack of knowledge of American history, enough time has passed with these current practices being the norm so that most American’s think it was never otherwise.
The flier at left, which arrived at my house within the past week (fittingly, on garbage day), will stand as the final motivation for me to actually take the time to go out on primary day and actively vote against Linc Chafee.
No doubt exacerbated by current events and the specific fears that plague aware citizens of the day, I find this imagery both disturbing in its callousness and offensive in its aggression on a very basic level. Take a bow, National Republican Senatorial Committee; although I can’t claim that you’ve driven me away from a vote for the candidate whom you favor, you’ve most certainly increased Mr. Laffey’s votes by a count of at least one.
If it should happen that Mr. Laffey wins and you shift your focus toward his election, please learn from your mistakes and don’t sway voters toward Sheldon Whitehouse.
Do we believe in reason and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong? Do we believe in and teach the uniqueness of our Western Civilization tradition? Or, has the relativism of multiculturalism dumbed it all down to where there are no standards of excellence or truth discoverable by some combination of reason or faith?
In Having it Both Ways on “Values”, William Voegli writes:
…The more practical problem with the fact-value distinction is that no one, including those who espouse it, actually believes it. No one is really “value-neutral” with respect to his own values, or regards them as values, arbitrary preferences that one just happens to be saddled with…
The problem with relativism is its insistence that all moral impulses are created equal – that there are no reasons to choose the standards of the wise and good over those of the deranged and cruel. A world organized according to that principle would be anarchic, uninhabitable. As Leo Strauss wrote, the attempt to “regard nihilism as a minor inconvenience” is untenable.
The problem with relativists is that they always dismiss other people’s beliefs, but spare their own moral preferences from their doctrine’s scoffing…
Justice, rights, moral common sense – either these are things we can have intelligent discussions about or they aren’t…
In The Myth of Relgious Tolerance, Thomas Williams writes:
[Open full post]The vehement, sometimes acrimonious debates that accompanied the drafting of the Vatican II declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, yielded an exceptionally precise and carefully worded document. Noteworthy in the 5,700-word declaration is the absence of even a single reference to religious “tolerance” or “toleration.”
The choice of religious “freedom” or “liberty” as the proper category for discussion and the exclusion of “tolerance” flies in the face of the societal trend to deal with church-state issues in terms of religious tolerance…
Why Tolerance Isn’t Enough
Religion is a good to be embraced and defended – not an evil to be put up with. No one speaks of tolerating chocolate pudding or a spring walk in the park. By speaking of religious “tolerance,” we make religion an unfortunate fact to be borne – like noisy neighbors and crowded buses – not a blessing to be celebrated.
Our modern ideas of religious tolerance sprang from the European Enlightenment. A central tenet of this movement was the notion of progress, understood as the overcoming of the ignorance of superstition and religion to usher in the age of reason and science…
Since religion was the primary cause of conflict and war, the argument went, peace could only be achieved through a lessening of people’s passion for religion and commitment to specific doctrines…
The language of tolerance was first proposed to describe the attitude that confessional states, such as Anglican England and Catholic France, should adopt toward Christians of other persuasions (though no mention was made of tolerance for non-Christian faiths). The assumption was that the state had recognized a certain confession as “true” and put up with other practices and beliefs as a concession to those in error. This led, however, to the employment of tolerance language toward religion. The philosophes would downplay or even ridicule religion in the firm belief that it would soon disappear altogether. Thus, separation of church and state becomes separation of public life and religious belief. Religion was excluded from public conversation and relegated strictly to the intimacy of home and chapel. Religious tolerance is a myth, but a myth imposed by an anti-religious intellectual elite.
After the first three Republican Senate debates, Senator Lincoln Chafee left voters with three seemingly incompatible views of foreign policy…
- A flirtation with pacifism (“A bad peace is better than a good war“),
- Support for isolationism (“Fear of foreign entanglements“), and
- Support for American hegemony (“A world where America is the strongest country in a peaceful world“).
Start with the second statement above. Senator Chafee is not issuing the warning against entanglements as an endorsement of a minimalist foreign policy, in the way that the warning has historically been understood. In fact, over the course of the campaign, the Senator has made it clear that he favors of a great number of foreign entanglements.
Let’s compare the entanglements that Senator Chafee favors to ones he opposes. We know that Senator Chafee opposed the War in Iraq; you can make a perfectly valid case that Iraq has proven that the US was not ready for an entanglement of that scale, so there is no problem with the Senator’s position here.
But we also know that Senator Chafee had an initial instinctive ambivalence against action in Afghanistan. We know that the Senator was one of just three to oppose sanctions against Syria for its continuing support of terrorism, yet he wants America to invest itself in putting strong diplomatic pressure on Israel. You can’t apply the kind of diplomatic pressure the Senator favors without being strongly entangled in the world. We know that Senator Chafee favors more negotiations with Syria and Iran, which can be fairly described as further entanglements. We know that the Senator was willing to tangle himself up with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to take his low-cost oil. And it is hard to see how the US can play enough of role in reducing poverty in Mexico to impact illegal immigration into the United States, as the Senator has suggested, without a willingness to become entangled in that country’s affairs.
An unfortunate pattern emerges. The Senator seems biased against “entanglements” when they support an ally facing an armed threat (Israel) or take the battle to an adversary (Syria, Afghanistan), while he embraces entanglements that are of the nature of “global social work” or quests for — dare I use the word — appeasement of adversaries.
With this narrow meaning of “entanglement” understood, the different ideas expressed by Senator Chafee do fit together into a coherent whole. Change the third principle expressed by the Senator to “America should be one of the two strongest countries in a peaceful world”, and you have a pretty good description of the foreign policy of President Jimmy Carter, a policy that was built on the assumption that the existence of the United States somehow frightened leaders that might otherwise be reasonable into becoming hard-line expansionists. History quickly revealed this assumption to be wrong. The existence of the US was the check on Communist expansion, not the source of it. And the policies that flowed from the Carter administration — heavy-pressure-on-allies/nothing-more-than-talk-with-adversaries to prove how “nice” we were — did nothing to mellow the totalitarian drive for domination.
Now, the source of instability in the world is not a Communist bloc, but the dictatorships, oligarchies and terrorist networks that have been spawned in failed states and are controlled by leaders all-too-comfortable with the use of violence for expanding their political power. But the nature of dictatorship really hasn’t changed in the last 25 years. Dictators today, just like the dictators of the past, are willing to use violence as an instrument of policy because of something intrinsic to themselves, not because of a reaction to the policies of the United States.
If the United States follows the path that Senator Chafee seems to be suggesting — punishing allies and engaging in endless talk with adversaries while signaling that any action against adversaries is off-the-table, because it is too “entangling” — the result will be an invitation to oligarchs and warlords to step-up their violent push against us. This is not an invitation that will promote peace, or even mere stability, for anyone. [Open full post]
A long time ago (November of 2004, or so), we at Anchor Rising started talking about whether or not Senator Chafee would be facing any real opposition in 2006. Part of this was out of a desire to see another Republican who, as Justin Katz wrote, didn’t hem and haw so much. I wanted someone who would be a little more, well, serious, and willing to take a principled, conservative stance — including supporting a President of his own party on key issues — every now and then. And we weren’t just talking about his opposition to the Iraq War or tax policy. Even on secondary issues, he could be aggravating. Case in point: His very “democratic” opposition to the Electoral College, which I took him to task for, as did Justin. At the same time, I wondered if the RI GOP would become more effective, and Justin reported that change was indeed afoot with Steve Laffey as one of the agents.
Thus, lo’ and behold, the waters began to roil, and the seas began to change (as metaphors begin to mix), and talk of real opponents for the good Senator began to percolate. Rep. James Langevin was an early favorite and was mentioned at National Review. This inspired Justin to wonder if it might be worth it to “clear the decks” by voting for anybody but Chafee (well, except Patrick K.). Of course, I had to add my 2 cents and discussed a variety of “what if?” scenarios centered around the speculation that Langevin would oppose Chafee. And then, in the back of the room, Mayor Laffey began raising his hand.
While the postulations about his potential primary opponents were coming to the fore, Senator Chafee opposed the Bush Administrations “Clear Skies” initiative (and offered his own), explained why tax increases lay at the heart of his Social Security reform measures, and also displayed his deliberative dutifulness by see-sawing around the first nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador (and he’s doing it again) and standing up as the lone Republican to vote against Priscilla Owen to the Court of Appeals. All of this inspired Mac Owens to pen the Senator a letter.
Meanwhile, back here in Rhode Island, Mayor Laffey was hosting a radio show and talking to the likes of the East Greenwich School Committee about the nature of contract talks with teachers. He was also causing me some concern about his conservative credentials with his acceptance of the Mexican and Guatemalen Matricula Consular identification cards. Amidst all of this, a “Draft Laffey” movement erupted and elicited comment from national pundit Hugh Hewitt. I opined that I thought the movement had less to do with the viability of Laffey as a Senate candidate than with a general dislike for Chafee and also went on record as saying I distrusted the “cult of personality” that seemed to surround the Mayor.
Andrew Morse explained the unsuccessful efforts made by the RI GOP to convince Steve Laffey to run for a state-level office and not the U.S. Senate. Andrew also wondered “what strings [were] attached” (all for Chafee?) to an early $500,000 donation to the state GOP from the national party.
Don Hawthorne then offered his own “Reflections on Chafee, Laffey, Party Politics & the Future of Rhode Island,” in which he dismissed Chafee (“What is the big deal if Senator Chafee loses in 2006?”) and suggested that Mayor Laffey could put his talents to better use by running for a statewide office — like Treasurer — and thus help rebuild the Republican party in Rhode Island. But Mayor Laffey decided to run for the Senate anyway, and Senator Chafee said that he’d “take great satisfaction in ending” Mayor Laffey’s political career. And the gloves were off!!!
With the Laffey/Chafee race off and running, I expressed a hope that the Laffey campaign could help lead to reform within the RI GOP. (Now I have a few doubts.) Don also weighed in and explained that, while most recognized that Senator Chafee was a lost cause to conservatives, Mayor Laffey’s conservative bona fides needed a little vetting as his views on healthcare and energy demonstrated political opportunism over a principled, conservative vision.
Senator Chafee realized he couldn’t appeal to the the GOP base in Rhode Island (yes, even in Rhode Island, it’s conservative) and actively sought to woo Democrats (as “Independents”) into the GOP primary, with the help of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. At this point, I tried to sum up where the Laffey/Chafee race stood. (And after re-reading that post, not much has changed in a year!) I also delved into the difference between ideological and political motivation in electoral politics.
In December, as the National Republican Senatorial Committee explained why non-Republicans were the key to electing Chafee, Mayor Laffey garnered the support of the Club for Growth. It was also revealed that Mayor Laffey had donated to Democrats in the past and that he had a penchant for pixelization. Justin was critical of the sophomoric mindset that resulted in Laffey’s pixel problem and then felt it necessary to clarify to the “you’re either with ’em or agin ’em” crowd that criticism of a candidate didn’t equate to non-support. Additionally, Mayor Laffey clarified that, just like Senator Chafee, he was opposed to drilling in ANWR. Thus, they do, in fact, agree on something.
The new year brought a ratcheting up of Mayor Laffey’s War on “Pork” and more deliberate deliberation from Senator Chafee, this time on the confirmation of now-Justice Alito. After everyone else had voted, he was the sole Republican to say “No“; Laffey said he would have said “Yes,” and I discussed why this vote showed that Senator Chafee wasn’t even a Moderate Republican and that I simply couldn’t support him. Then National Review endorsed Laffey and the Chafee camp responded.
This spring brought polls (too many to link to!), anti-Laffey ads, anti-Chafee ads, and more tete-a-tete.
Senator Chafee was environmentally consistent in supporting the Cape Wind Project (as did Laffey — hey, that’s two things they agree on). Chafee also voted against pork (yes, really) in the Senate and voted against allowing Hawaii to set up a racially based government. For his part, Mayor Laffey offered up his own school choice program and a tax plan. Both candidates also revealed their differences over their policies toward Israel and immigration reform.
In June, Justin braved the RI GOP convention and managed (barely) to stay awake as Senator Chafee was officially endorsed while Mayor Laffey stayed away. Andrew dissected the Laffey and Chafee approaches toward immigration (1, 2, 3). And Senator Chafee continued to pound on the central point of his entire Senate campaign: Laffey can’t beat Whitehouse. This prompted me to ask if conservative and moderate Republicans (and independents) could unite after this tendentious GOP primary to keep Sheldon “Picnic” Whitehouse out of the Senate.
Later in the summer, a debate schedule was announced, and our own Aggregatin’ Andrew produced recaps of ’em all.
Debate number 1 was held on the Arlene Violet Show, and Andrew summarized the opening statements and the candidate’s views on illegal immigration, war and the Middle East, a cross-examination, taxes and spending, and a few other matters. Then Andrew followed up on the ProJo’s post-debate follow-up and then followed up again.
Debate 2 was on the Dan Yorke Show (audio here: 1, 2, 3, 4), and Andrew posted on Politics and Punditry, the Ad-Wars (1 & 2), and Issues.
For Debate 3, which was sponsored by WPRI (debate transcript is here) and broadcast nationally on C-SPAN (debate video as well as candidate ads can be found here), Andrew offered an open forum as well as some summaries on the budget, immigration and foreign policy. I also offered my own post-debate thoughts.
Then a little dirty pool was played when some of Mayor Laffey’s college writings mysteriously found their way into the lap of the ProJo, and Justin sought some clarification from the Mayor.
Finally, WJAR sponsored Debate 4 (Part 1, Part 2, and Bill Rappleye’s Recap found here), and Andrew posted an open thread and summaries of the lightning round and the three panel portions of the debate (1, 2, 3).
Senator Chafee and the NRSC got into hot water over a pro-Chafee commercial that included imagery of Hispanic illegal (purportedly) immigrants that seemed to saddle them with being a threat to national security. The ad was pulled (eventually), after (as the ProJo noted) the ad had run its predetermined course.
With two weeks to go before the primary, Don concluded that neither Chafee nor Laffey had measured up to the “political greatness” test. On the other hand, Justin’s early doubts about Mayor Laffey’s demeanor seem to have been allayed by the Mayor’s debate performances.
With a week to go, both Chafee and Laffey have received national exposure while negative ads are dominating the airwaves and polls give us no hint as to who will emerge victorious. For that, we’ll have to wait ’til Tuesday.
Apparently, Sheldon Whitehouse doesn’t want to be bothered by the press questioning him too closely on such substantive issues as the War in Iraq. So much so, that he’s decided to drop his call for a deadline to withdraw the troops “because a reporter would question him about it if such a date passed without a troop withdrawal.” What?
To summarize the story in today’s ProJo, Sheldon Whitehouse opposes the Iraq War and opposed “firm deadlines for troop withdrawal” last November but then changed his mind (when it looked like then-Dem primary opponent Matt Brown was gaining traction) and declared “that all the U.S. troops should withdraw by the end of this year” in the Spring of 2006. This put him on the radical left-wing side of the argument, setting him “apart from Chafee and the majority of Senate Democrats — including [Senator Jack] Reed.” In mid-June, Whitehouse said he would have supported Sen. John Kerry’s proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq by mid-2007, but he still preferred the December 2006 deadline. He also said he would have supported Senator Reed’s “nonbinding resolution” calling for a timetable to withdraw some troops by years end, though he preferred Kerry’s (by then) defeated proposal. And now:
Whitehouse has since moved back toward the political center on the war issue, dropping his call for a specific deadline for pulling out the troops. In television and newspaper interviews over the last two weeks, Whitehouse has said military leaders should set the pace for a pullout, with “troop safety” as the key factor in their decision.
Whitehouse said in an interview last week that he held the same position before and after Brown’s departure from the race: a call for a “rapid and responsible” withdrawal that would open the door to diplomatic solutions to the conflict.
It was “the march of time” that changed his December pullout deadline, according to Whitehouse. Whitehouse said he does not now seek a new, later deadline, because a reporter would question him about it if such a date passed without a troop withdrawal.
That’s a good reason to change your mind….so a reporter won’t ask you about it. That’s leadership.
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