Andrew is perspicacious to note, in a comment to the previous post, that the Chafee camp’s talk of ending Steve Laffey’s political career is disconcerting. Laffey may or may not be worth keeping on a list of potential Republican candidates, but this tough rhetoric — now used too frequently to be mere candid overstatement — is a strategic loser.
Most directly, such talk will make it more difficult for Chafee to gain the general-election votes of those who opposed him in the primary, assuming he makes it that far. His campaign may be correct that some percentage of us simply cannot be won over, but even if that is their calculation, it’s difficult to see what (or whom) they stand to gain by posturing in the public square — political cap guns twirling around their fingers.
Especially spoken by and on behalf of a Senator whose political and policy image can most charitably be described as that of an amiable Ichabod, the language of a Brom Bones echoes phony. Not only does it put the lie to claims of inclusiveness, maturity, and evenness of temper, but it evokes the impression of a man made haughty by the proximity of his “friends.” Worse, it makes the once-endearingly unadept Chafee (to adapt Patricia Morgan’s characterization) sound a bit too confident in his mastery of the political game.
Projecting strength in that area makes conspicuous his failure to do the same when it comes to those aspects of his job that have more to do with leadership.
Following is a rough summary of Dan Yorke’s interview with Republican National Senatorial Committee spokesperson Brian Nick.
First, Dan Yorke found it provocative that Elizabeth Dole personally tried to talk Steve Laffey out of running against Sen. Chafee. Nick explained that Dole told Laffey that the mission of the Senatorial Commitee is to protect incumbents. By that rationale, they will support Sen. Chafee. Above that, their data shows that the best way to keep a Senate seat and to keep the Senate in GOP hands is to keep Chafee, the incumbent, on the ballot. As such, worrying about a primary is not conducive to the priority they have put on re-electing Sen. Chafee.
Yorke then asked about why Laffey is regarded as a liability. To this, Nick answered that, first, since an incumbent is elected 85% of the time, incumbency is a lot more of a guarantee then having a wide open election. Second, as far as the issues break down, from their understanding of talking to both Chafee and folks in Rhode Island, Sen. Chafee fits the mainstream of where most Rhode Islander’s are on the issues. Finally, putting someone on the ticket who is untested, has no understanding of Washington, D.C., no relationship with the Senate or the President and is simply not ready does not appeal to them.
Yorke asked if they had done any research on Laffey. Nick stated that Laffey was initially tough to read: he’s raised taxes, but word of mouth had it that he’s a conservative. Then there is a T.V. add that sounds like a John Kerry or Hillary Clinton demonizing the Republican’s energy policy. To them, it seems like Laffey’s people are focus grouping to find his niche.
Yorke joked that they should have figured out that the worst thing to do was to have Elizabeth Dole try to cajole the contrarian-by-nature Laffey into not running. That was the wrong M.O.
To this, Nick said that, though they knew that going in, they thought it possible he could be persuaded. He then offered that they had thought he could be persuaded to run for some of the other open RI political offices (Lt. Gov, State Treasure). Then, in an unsolicited aside, he stated that Chafee will have to beat Laffey in the primary and it’ll be more expensive and more time consuming, but there’ll be a certain amount of enjoyment in ending his [Laffey’s] career before it started.
Picking up on this, Yorke asked why the animosity, to which Nick stated that they felt that Laffey didn’t respect the privacy of the meeting with Dole and that, in general, he has handled things without a lot of respect.
Yorke replied that it seemed to him that this isn’t just one of those go-through-the-motions-to-support-an-incumbent deal, but that this guy [Laffey] “has pissed you off.” Nick responded that, “I can tell you this, has he been helpful to the overall agenda? No.”
Yorke commented that they were getting a flavor of Laffey and that because he squeeled and violated protocol, they were going after him. Nick responded that, while Laffey does like to lecture people, we don’t want to curse him and we will make sure Chafee is re-elected.
Yorke then asked about the Laffey “tax machine” add campaign and Nick explained how it came about. He added that, from his understanding, Laffey prides himself as being a fiscal conservative, but he [Nick] was pretty sure that, if you personally have raised taxes, you can’t have anti-tax rhetoric and be persuasive.
Yorke responded that that may be true, but Cranston was in pretty dire straits. To this, Nick responded that, while that may be true, it is his contention that Laffey didn’t need to raise taxes to the extent he did.
Yorke asked about Laffey’s latest add concerning the price of oil. Nick then brought out what he obviously felt was a hammer. According to Nick, while Laffey says he’s going to take on and stand up to the special interests, Laffey himself profited from oil and gas interests while he was in Memphis, TN. And now he promises to take them on.
Finally, Yorke asked if they were really “holding your nose a bit with Chafee” who has been a thorn in the side of the Bush Administration? Nick responded that, while it was an important point, we don’t work for the Administration, we want what’s best for the Senate majority. Sometimes those things aren’t the same. Accordingly, Chafee as an independent Senator is admirable and politically smart and he’s a valuable member of the caucus. Yorke mentioned Chafee’s vote for Bush, Sr. in the last election and Nick responded that he’s [Chafee] willing to speak his mind and take a stand and to speak for the people of Rhode Island.
There you have it. In essence, to the GOP Senatorial Committee, it’s about keeping incumbents in office and maximizing the chance of maintaining a majority. If that means sacrificing ideology, so be it. Of course, it’s not as if Mayor Laffey can be considered a “mainstream” conservative himself, given his recent ad campaign rhetoric! In short, it appears as if we RI conservatives should say “how-de-do” to Mr. Rock and Mr. Hardplace when it comes to the coming RIGOP primary.
*note: Minor text edits and cleaning up done @ 7:40 PM. MAC
UPDATE:This story in the Warwick Beacon has more on the links between Mayor Laffey and the oil industry, including the charges made by Nicks and the response from Laffey.
Everyone can read about the good and the bad of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Without further comment, and to add some “perspective,” here is an image of the area in dispute.
Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for Harrah’s and the Narragansett Tribe as the RI Supreme Court has concluded that the latest casino proposal doesn’t pass constitutional muster:
A bill that would allow the Narragansett Indians to open a casino on nontribal land does not pass constitutional muster, the state Supreme Court said in an advisory opinion today, responding to a request by legislators who crafted the bill.
In its opinion, the court said the measure fails to satisfy a provision of the state constitution that requires any lotteries in Rhode Island to be state-run.
Las Vegas-based Harrah’s Entertainment and the Narragansett Indian Tribe are seeking to build a casino in Rhode Island, off their tribal lands in Charlestown. Lawyers presented oral arguments last month to a three-justice panel of the state’s highest court.
The opinion said the legislation would leave the state Lottery Division without control over the proposed casino, including the types of table games played there and the extension of credit to gamblers.
Without direct authority over those parts of the operation, the justices wrote, “the state simply cannot in good faith be said to be operating the casino.”
The justices note that the proposed legislation did give the state more power — including the ability to direct daily revenue, set the odds of winning and determine the number of table games and video lottery terminals — than a bill introduced last year. But they said it was not enough to comply with the state constitution.
“To summarize, we interpret the proposed Casino Act as granting to the Lottery Division the power to make decisions concerning many, but not all, operational aspects of the gaming enterprise,” the opinion reads. . .
The tribe has tried for more than a decade to get approval to build a casino.
A year ago last August, the high court derailed a Harrah’s-Narragansett casino proposal for West Warwick as it was headed to the state ballot after clearing the General Assembly and surviving a gubernatorial veto.
Responding then to an advisory opinion request from Governor Carcieri, the court said the casino legislation and referenda question ran afoul of a requirement in the state Constitution that all “lotteries” be state-operated.
To remove this legal barrier, the casino’s legislative backers introduced a new version of the bill this year.
It recast the proposed West Warwick casino as state-operated, to be run by the Narragansetts and their chosen partner under a contract with the state Lottery Commission.
Under the aegis of House Speaker William J. Murphy, of West Warwick, the House voted to seek the court’s opinion first this time, before voting.
Carcieri praised the court’s opinion today, saying Harrah’s had put forward an “unconstitutional scheme.”
“For two years in a row, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has ruled the Harrah’s casino legislation unconstitutional,” the governor said in a statement. “I have said all along that this is nothing but a Harrah’s casino. For the second time in a row, the Supreme Court has agreed with me.”
I’d still feel better if the Governor hadn’t hatched the pragmatic but ideologically inconistent plan of expanding Lincoln Park. Nonetheless, so long as we can keep the seemingly “painless” and get-rich-quick option of increased gambling revenue from the hands of our state politicians, the better chance we have of them pursuing other, more sound, avenues of economic development.
[Open full post]According to the New York Times, it costs $8,000,000 to refurbish a hospital in Najaf, Iraq (h/t Andrew Sullivan). According to the highway bill, it will cost $10,000,000 for “transportation improvements” to the Blackstone River Bikeway. Am I the only one who thinks there is something amiss with these relative amounts?
These kind of numbers really have to make you rethink the idea that Iraq is an unprecedented drain on American resources.
To see the complete list of Rhode Island highway bill earmarks, click here.
To see $49,000,000 in earmarked funds suggested for redirection to New Orleans, click here.
Terry Eastland has written an article entitled Chief Justice Roberts: The distinction between law and politics that the Judiciary Democrats do not respect lies at the heart of Roberts’s approach to judging, including these words:
On the final day of the Roberts hearings, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois tried one last time: “If you’ve made one point many times over . . . the course of the last three days,” he told the judge, “it is that as a judge you will be loyal and faithful to the process of law, to the rule of law.” But “beyond loyalty to the process of law,” he asked Roberts, “how do you view [the] law when it comes to expanding our personal freedom? . . . That’s what I’ve been asking.”
And so, in various ways, had Durbin’s Democratic colleagues been asking about such matters–ones “beyond loyalty” to the rule of law. In response to Durbin, Roberts stuck to the point he had indeed made “many times over.” Reframing the senator’s question so as to reach the core issue, Roberts said, “Somebody asked me, you know, ‘Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?’ And you obviously want to give an immediate answer. But as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath. The oath that a judge takes is not that ‘I’ll look out for particular interests.’ . . . The oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that’s what I would do.”
That exchange crystallized the fundamental difference between John Roberts and the eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democrats believe a good judge will move “beyond loyalty” to the rule of law, if necessary, and seek to advance certain political outcomes–in Durbin’s question, the expansion of personal freedom. Roberts dissents: He believes a good judge will distinguish between law and politics and stick resolutely to the law, regardless of the result…He’ll not look out for “particular interests” because his oath obligates him to support not this or that interest but the Constitution and the laws of the United States…
There is unease among some conservatives as to how Chief Justice Roberts will turn out. Yet it must be said that Roberts has made emphatically clear his view that a judge must be restrained by the law–the rules, principles, customs, practices, and understandings that define it–and must not allow the law to be infused with the judge’s own political views and personal values. In other words, the distinction between law and politics that the Judiciary Democrats do not respect lies at the heart of Roberts’s approach to judging…
Roberts took care on numerous occasions to emphasize the importance of the distinction between law and politics as it relates to judging. For example, in response to Lindsey Graham’s question about what the judge regarded as the biggest threats to the rule of law today, Roberts identified only one threat–the “tendency on behalf of some judges to take . . . [their] authority and extend it into areas where they’re going beyond the interpretation of the Constitution, where they’re making the law”–the province of elected officials. He observed: “Judges have to recognize that their role is a limited one. That is the basis of their legitimacy. I’ve said it before and I’ll just repeat myself: The Framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government, to sit down and say, ‘Let’s take all the difficult issues before us and let’s have the judges decide them.’ That would have been the farthest thing from their mind.”
The failure of the Judiciary Democrats to applaud comments like these, their evident desire to have justices and judges who go beyond any loyalty to the rule of law to advance “progressive” visions, demonstrates how far their party has traveled since the middle of the past century, when Justices Robert Jackson and Felix Frankfurter still sat on the Court. Jackson (whom Roberts admires, by the way) and Frankfurter sought to preserve the judiciary “in its established but limited place in American politics,” wrote Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in 1947…By the end of the Warren Court, political judging had become the norm for most Democrats. So it has been ever since, and so it is today that a nominee committed to judicial restraint like Roberts received the reception he did from the law firm of Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein, Biden, Schumer, Feingold, and Durbin….
I hope, but am far from certain, that Chief Justice Roberts’ central belief about the importance of judicial restraint will lead to the Supreme Court ceasing its recent legislating practices. What I do believe is that a strong belief about restraint has a greater chance of yielding that outcome than the activist views of leading Democrats.
[Open full post]Andrew has started the debate here in Rhode Island, asking why we are spending highway bill pork in RI at a time of national need in New Orleans.
In what is likely to be another example of how the blogosphere is changing politics, take a look at this posting from Instapundit about various bloggers looking for pork awarded their state in the recent highway bill, including Andrew’s posting.
Instapundit extends the pork debate with this important additional posting, linking to this interesting porkbuster site from Truth Laid Bear that is the result of an idea developed by TLB and Instapundit. Congratulations to them for such a good idea.
So how do you think our Senators Chafee and Reed as well as our Congressmen Langevin and Kennedy will respond to this responsible idea of porkbusting?
Maybe we should ask each of them…
This story shows the latest example of just how unprincipled a man Bill Clinton is.
Power Line has a strongly-worded response.
For a man who (i) had shady dealings with a range of Communist Chinese or their agents; (ii) passed up an opportunity to capture bin Laden when he was offered to the USA before 9/11; (iii) treated terrorism as a police action matter against which to lob a few cruise missiles; (iv) ran $300 billion budget deficits until the Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and reduced spending enough to yield surpluses; (v) took personal credit for the Cold War peace dividend achieved by President Reagan; (vi) decimated the US military after the Cold War; (vii) brought dishonor to the White House by his personal behavior; (viii) created the legacy of perpetual campaigning; and, (ix) took the techniques of personal destruction against political opponents to a unprecedented level, Bill Clinton certainly has chutzpah.
And he has no grace. That is why history will show him for what he is: a petty small-state governor whose personal charisma allowed him to reach heights where his lack of values then made him a spineless man who had to triangulate because he didn’t have the backbone to lead like a real man.
Small and inconsequential to the long-term history of America. That will be his legacy as President – unless we let him succeed in his unilateral effort to rewrite history.
Not in our lifetime, Slick Willie.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
JunkYardBlog has more.
Oblogatory Anecdotes also has more.
Andrew has done a tremendous service by publishing the actual highway bill “benefits” to Rhode Island: $150 million of projects spread around the state.
Senator Chafee voted for the highway bill. Since one of his key campaign positions is fiscal conservatism, I thought it might be useful to do some math on the true cost of those state projects to Rhode Islanders.
The true cost of the highway bill projects is the hidden cost effect of the highway bill that our elected officials will never talk about: Rhode Island residents are paying a pro rata cost for every single project across the entire United States as the price for getting their highway bill projects.
Let’s make some simplifying assumptions that have the effect of changing the precise numbers without changing the conclusion. Assume the number of taxpayers as a percentage of the total population is roughly the same across the fifty states. This allows us to simplify the analysis by using the population of the USA and of Rhode Island. Assume there are 1 million residents in Rhode Island. The highway bill was for $286 billion. Since there are just under 300 million Americans, the highway bill spends about $1,000 per American.
Therefore, the tax burden for Rhode Islanders from the highway bill equals roughly $1 billion ($1,000 per resident x 1 million state residents).
That $1 billion bought us $150 million of special projects. I am sure there are some hidden nuances in that pork-laden bill that will accrue to the benefit of Rhode Islanders. But, even if there are, remember there would have to be $850 million of nuances (a multiple of 5.67) just to get to tax payment breakeven for Rhode Island residents.
So, during the upcoming campaign, when Senator Chafee takes a photo opportunity with one of the highway bill projects and touts how he brought home the bacon for us, remember that Rhode Island residents will be paying as much as $6.67 per person in extra taxes for every $1 of projects proudly boasted about by Chafee.
Senator Chafee, is this how you define fiscal conservatism?
Since my family has five members, we are paying roughly $33 in extra taxes for that $1 of benefit. I can assure you that is not our definition of fiscal conservatism.
[You can read more about the highway bill here:
The Highway Bill: Another Example of Unacceptable Government Spending
The Highway Bill: “Egregious and Remarkable”
Tapscott: Has the GOP Lost Its Soul?
Has the GOP Lost Its Soul? Part II.]
One suggestion for finding funding to pay for the $200B reconstruction of New Orleans is to redirect funding allocated in the recently passed highway bill. Here is the list of projects earmarked for Rhode Island, straight from the text of the bill. Are Rhode Islanders — citizens and Congressional delegation alike — willing to step up and declare that they are willing to sacrifice some of these projects to help rebuild a decimated American city?
| Transportation Improvements for the Apponaug Bypass | $22,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Washington Secondary Bicycle Facility/Coventry Greenway/Trestle Trail (Coventry) | $4,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Northwest Biketrail/Woonasquatucket River Greenway (Providence, Johnston) | $6,000,000 |
| New Interchange constructed from I-195 to Taunton and Warren Avenue in East Providence | $7,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Blackstone River Bikeway (Providence, Woonsocket) | $10,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Jamestown Bridge Demolition–Bicycle Access/Trestle Span Demolition/Fishing Pier (N. Kingstown) | $4,000,000 |
| Weybosset Street (200 Block) Streetscape and Drop-off Lane Improvement-Providence | $750,000 |
| Acquisition of fee or easement, construction of a trail, and site improvements in Foster | $1,000,000 |
| Open space acquisition to mitigate growth associated with SR 4 and Interstate 95, by non-profit land conservation agencies through acquisition of fee or easement, with a match requirement of 50% of the total purchase price | $8,000,000 |
| Replace Sakonnet Bridge | $7,000,000 |
| Transportation Enhancements at Blackstone Valley Heritage Corridor | $500,000 |
| Bury the Power Lines at India Point | $2,500,000 |
| Restore and Expand Maritime Heritage site in Bristol | $500,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Colt State Park Bike Path | $2,000,000 |
| Construct trails and facility improvements within the Rhode Island National Wildlife Refuge complex | $1,000,000 |
| Improvements for the Commuter rail in Rhode Island | $5,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the East Main Road in Middletown | $5,000,000 |
| Downtown Circulation Improvements Providence | $2,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Route 138 (South Kingstown) | $4,000,000 |
| Transportation Improvements for the Route 1 Gilbert Stuart Turnaround (N. Kingstown) | $2,750,000 |
| Rehabilitate and improve Rt. 138 from Rt. 108 to Rt. 2 | $12,000,000 |
| Improve traffic circulation and road surfacing in downtown Providence | $5,000,000 |
| Improve access to Pell Bridge in Newport | $5,000,000 |
| Completion of Washington Secondary Bike Path from Coventry to Connecticut Border | $7,000,000 |
| Replace Warren Bridge in Warren | $11,000,000 |
| Rehabilitation of Stillwater Viaduct in Smithfield | $5,000,000 |
| Completion of Greenway from Johnston to Providence | $5,000,000 |
| Replace Natick Bridge in Warwick and West Warwick | $5,000,000 |
