I'm not all that surprised that the Chafee folks are claiming to have "won" the debate. In their eyes, if Chafee is able to use both nouns and verbs and use them to form complete sentences, then he has "won." They've set their standard for "winning" so impossibly low, that it's nearly impossible in their eyes for him to "lose." If you simply read the press release on their website, it's composed entirely of spin and propaganda. It's nothing at all substantive, and I think most would also read it as being uncharacteristically nasty.

The one thing I see as a net positive for Laffey, since it was the first of four debates, is that they now know what tack that Chafee is going to use in them, and can adjust their strategy accordingly. It also has a side benefit for Laffey of boosting expectations somewhat for Chafee. I think, prior to yesterday, expectations for Laffey were set way too high, and those for Chafee way too low, that the MSM couldn't have really seen it any other way than they did, regardless of the substance of the debate. I'm confident that will change quickly.

When you're engaged in a four round boxing match, it's quite normal for someone using strategy not to try to deliver the knock-out punch in Round 1.

A bad peace is better than a good war???? The British offered peace to George Washington and our revolutionary leaders in 1775, at the depths of our misery during the war for our independence. Chafee would have surely voted to take the offer.

Then again, he would not have been a politician then. He would not have been a revolutionary, but a shiftless tory straddling the fence to see who was going to win.

Chamberlain's 1938 deal with Hitler was a "bad peace". Should we not have gone to war later? The Israelis' gave back Gaza a year ago. Another "bad peace." Should they not respond now to rocket attacks and soldier kidnappings?

If democratically elected governments all adhered to Chafee's "bad peace" credo, we would live in a world overrun by fanatical muslims and fascist dictators.

His statement is the most naive and dangerous comment I have ever heard from a so-called politician on the national stage

The same folks who promised us Laffey would kick Linc's tuckus are now claiming Chafee was judged the winner because expectations for him were so low?

Chafee came across as uncomfortable, unknowlegeable and a jerk for his weak digs at Laffey.

Laffey stuck to the issues and came across as much smarter and articulate...and he kept to the high road.

I've seen Laffey in action at many Cranston meetings. In the heat of debate, with the room filled with the taxpayers' enemies, he stays cool and collected, holds his own and stands up for the people. It sounded like the same Laffey last night. Chafee sounded like a scared and desparate challenger, rather than like a comfortable incumbent.

I think it's looking up for Laffey!

If you thought Chafee came off as a jerk at yesterday's debate, you should see his new TV commerical that just began airing. It's way, way down in the gutter, filled with lies and fabrications, and certainly doesn't reflect well on Chafee's character. I think it will help Laffey.

Dear Rhody,

The Laffey people have been mistaking this mistake in relation to the "expectations game" all along. They are now reaping what they have sown.

Of course, the Chaffee people, being Chaffee people, couldn't handle prosperity for even 24 hours as they went negative again.

For the first time in the last two weeks, I have finally seen evidence of what turnout might be like in this race. If these indicators are true, I'm still collecting evidence, turn out will indeed be high but may not be high enough to save the Senator from West Virgina.

(Maybe it's because I'm from Newport, but every time I see or hear that "Save Chaffee" logo, I think of an unfortunate, entangled beached whale down by Fort Adams.)

-I think it's looking up for Laffey!-

If that's your reality you should bet $5000 on the Pirates to win the World Series. Laughey is caught red handed, on tape, wishing for elderly to die (a new, sordid twist on "pro-life"). In a primary where about half the voters will be elderly...well you do the math.
NOBODY'S LAFFEY-NG NOW!

-Senator from West Virgina-
That whole "Senator from Virginia" thing was a pathetic joke.
Where do you think are undistinguished trio of Democrat congressmen live. They all live in the DC area. Do you really expect them to stay on the Senate floor until midnight, charter a plane to RI, sleep for an hour and fly back to be in the Senate at 10AM? You think Laff-ey is going to do it/

Will, bounty, the usual suspects,

Stop with the spin game. I think you sense defeat and you don't know how to handle it. Mayor Laffey has three talking points - I fired old lady/crossing guards, I saved cranston, I lived the american dream - it just aint enough. I realize that he is smart, but he should try providing a little substance.

Dear Mike,

There is a huge difference between renting a second apartment to create an easier commute and establishing a "home".

No, I sense that Chafee is in real trouble. If he weren't, he wouldn't be down in the sewer with the rats, running crap on television. I agree with Bobby's accessment.

As for Mike, you presumably don't live in Rhode Island. If you did, you would know that Chafee's commercial takes three distinct episodes, takes them all way out of their actual contexts, and does nothing to help Chafee. Laffey did not wish "the elderly" to die. That's a lie. Oh, and Laffey's life was threaten by the firefighter union chief -- conveniently forgot that. I'm not going to comment on it further, because, and people who are regulars on this blog know, it has been amply covered.

If anything, it will help Laffey, because reinforces the impression that Chafee is desperate and will do absolutely anything to win, including lie. I've already been hearing great things about it (meaning, not pro-Chafee), so I say: KEEP RUNNING 'EM!

As for Senator Chafee’s statement of "a bad peace is better than a good war", I suggest that he Google the words "Neville, Chamberlain, 1938, Hitler" and see what the results of a "bad peace" are. World War II was known as a "Good War" for a reason. When you're battling evil, then you're doing good. When you sit back and let evil run amok, you are cooperating with that evil.

Winston Churchill said "All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."

That was truly one of the most foolish things I've ever heard come out of Senator Chafee's mouth.

PS I wonder if someone could check Lincoln Chafee's geneology, and see if he might be somehow related to Neville Chamberlain -- it'd certainly explain a lot!

Will-

The Chafee bunker has not yet seen fit to put the commercial on its website. I wonder why??

Although Laffey would probably abhor the idea, he should run a commercial showing Nazis overrunning Poland and France, with Chamberlain's "peace in our time" speech and Chafee's "bad peace" comment providing the background narrative.

The spot could end with U.S. troops liberating concentration camps and the words "Good War?" emblazoned on the screen.

Will-

Wait, I just got a better idea. This one could be done in an hour because they already have the template. How about the two peas in a pod theme - yet the bobbleheads are Chafee and Chamberlain.

I waited to see if the debate would change my mind. It did not. Chafee and Laffey are 2 of the most unimpressive candidates I have ever heard. Whitehouse wins by 6 points in the general election. Now I am calling it a 8 point difference.

Chafee should change staff today.

Rinny

The two peas in a pod might be a little too insider. Unfortunately, due to our horrible teaching of civics in public schools nowadays, not enough people probably remember who Chamberlain was, without more information about him than a picture of his head.

However, you probably could get some old newsreal footage, of Chamberlain making his peace pact with Hitler, proclaiming "Peace in our time," and then morph that into Chafee's most recent comments. I think it would segway perfectly. Anyway, I like your idea.

A few days ago, everyone was saying how Laffey would win the debates. Now when it's universally accepted that Chafee beat Laffey, it's because "the bar for Chafee was so low".

Now, despite a stream of negative press releases from Laffey, Chafee airs a commercial that actually quotes Laffey and it "shows Chafee doesn't have character"...uh, Chafee didn't put those words in Laffey's mouth. Laffey said them himelf. Does it really matter if Laffey said that he only wanted some elderly voters (e.g., Republicans) to die and not all elderly voters?

The character flaw is Laffey's for making the comment, not Chafee's for airing Laffey's comments.

By the way, Chafee didn't just "exceed expectations", he BEAT Laffey and Arlene Violet didn't even make stem cell research a major part of the discussion.

Let's admit it - for even a staunch Laffey supporter, at best it was a tie.

But if Mayor Laffey can't shake up Lincoln Chafee, what makes anyone think he can take on the entire Congress?

And that's assuming he can muster more than 20% of the vote against Whitehouse.

I'm having a tough time imaging why I would vote for Laffey, unless I was a Democrat voting in the primary trying to give Whitehouse the easiest road to DC.

I'm hoping the debate on Yorke's show will be a little more in-depth. Violet is a lightweight in so many ways and a damned crappy talkshow host. It's no surprise she failed to deliver a compelling debate between the idiot and the ego.

I think Arlene is very thoughtful and a great moderator. That said, I predict that Laffey will win the Yorke debate. Yorke's blowhard style suits Laffey. It will allow him to blah, blah, blah about the "American Dream," firing the crossing guards and securing the border first.

Has anyone else noticed that Laffey is very good at identifying a problem, but very bad at actually proposing a solution. How does he intend to secure the border? What's his plan? Turn Tiajuana into a recruiting center for Wal-Mart, so Mexicans can leave their country in company cars instead of by swimming across the Rio Grande?

I agree with Cabot Lodge. The Yorke debate should be right in Laffey's wheelhouse. Both Laffey and Yorke are agressive, have huge egos, and can't admit when they are wrong. Talk about two peas in a pod. Of course Laffey was a better talk show host than he is a mayor.

That said I would like to see a little more depth from Laffey. So far it is all sound bites and little substance. I was shocked by his lack of knowledge on major issues.

He doesn't know whether he supports government funds for abortion or not, he can't cite any reputable source which shows that adult stem cell research is the way forward, and he can't explain why the advice of the Cranston police chief regarding matricular consular cards is more compelling than the FBI which says the cards pose a security risk.

Let me start with a simple fact:
Nobody reads what we are writing except the four people from the Chafee camp and the ten or so from the Laffey camp. I will say that many (not all) of the Chafee posters seem to change their names regularly as has been pointed out and verified by the blog’s host.

That said, all the pontificating about how C is so superior and senatorial and how L is blustery and has a big ego is a huge pile of BS. Both candidates are successful in their own right, but they stand on very opposite poles on almost every issue that means something to the voters.

Arlene is great, blah, blah, blah. Don't talk about my family, blah, blah, blah. Yorke is a blowhard, blah, blah, blah. Laffey is so uninformed about the issues, blah, blah, blah.

There is no substance here. There is very little polished prose and tons of sound bite twists and spins on what the two candidates said and what they stand for.

Chafee voted against middle class tax cuts, the war in Iraq, George Bush, Sam Alito, and the flag burning amendment. He is socially and fiscally liberal.

Laffey wants to make the tax cuts permanent, supports the war in Iraq, George Bush, Sam Alito, and the flag burning amendment. He is socially and fiscally conservative.

Chafee’s tactic of dismissing the issues as unimportant and instead asking voters to look at character traits and what he can do in the future based upon what he has done to date will come back to haunt him before and after he loses the primary. This will obviously be a point well made in future debates and campaign info by Laffey, because in fact people do vote based upon how they perceive a candidate understands their world and the issues they care about.

There is also a very insincere note to Chafee’s rhetoric with his “family” comment when one of the first nasty attack ads run in this campaign attacked Laffey’s family and name. And now comes the “Bully” ad. The king of the cheap shots and head of the Bully’s Union, Karl Rove, must have written that twisted piece of slander himself. These below the belt shots are made even more egregious after hearing Chafee whine and whine about being hammered and hammered and hammered by the CFG. Crying is very unsenitorial.

Laffey took Chafee’s shots on the chin and stood his ground. I actually thought Laffey was quite the opposite of many in the Chafee camp’s character assassinations. He knows where he stands on the issues, articulates his positions eloquently, has the numbers down, and hasn’t as yet attacked Chafee’s character save in response to Chafee’s personal attacks. If you heard the same debate I did Chafee was all bully all the time. He attacked first and most often. Laffey talked about the issues, his plan, and how he wants to fix what is broken down in DC.

I score the first round of our four round bout (using the 10-point must system) 10-9 in favor of Laffey.

See you for round two this Thursday at 5PM.

J Mahn

I agree entirely with J Mahn (above). But I would add the following:

The recent Chafee TV ad is an outright lie. I think Will touched on how the points raised in the ad are way out of context. It's a shameful thing to be lying about a fellow Republican in that way. I didn't know Chafee would stoop that low. it's a "do-whatever-it-takes-to-win" approach, and it's going to hurt him. I also think it will be used to try to hurt Laffey after he wins the primary, because I suspect Whitehouse will quote these lies to mislead elderly voters.

Secondly, Mahn is right again on the debate. If one is fair with oneself, one could not call the debate a win on either side. This was really a sizing up. I also do not think a lot of people really listened to this debate. I don't think we'll see clear winners until the TV debates in my opinion, and the TV debates will enjoy a broader audience.

But the debates do give us an impression as to how each one will handle the future discussions.

Chafee's going to whine at them, and Laffey is going to win them.

Someone mentioned Whitehouse. Whitehouse just nailed the first nails ino his own coffin. He's coming out, committed to bringing home troops from Iraq by "the end of the year" before he would even be inaugurated in January, if by some miracle he wins the Senate race! How's he going to pull that off? He's jumping on Lamont's bandwagon. He couldn't have picked a worse time - in the immediate aftermath of a new 9/11 styled conspiracy which was thwarted by the those who favor the "good war" against islamo-fascist terrorists. Lamont won by 4% with a turnout of Democrats whose demographics were 60% liberal when all of CT polls liberals as comprising only 30% of Democrats. Lamont will lose, and so will Whitehouse if he faces a foe who is distinctly opposed to him like Laffey.

Whitehouse is polling based upon an assumed win by Chafee over Laffey, and has moved his position further left of the sufficiently liberal Chafee. Whitehouse will find himself in for it when he discovers he will be opposed by Laffey instead of Chafee in a Reagan Democrat state like RI. In which case, he's toast. But against Chafee, who knows?

Laffey's chances of winning the general are slim to none. The most recent Rasmussen poll puts a Whitehouse-Laffey race at 55% to 31%. Laffey also had the highest unfavorable rating of any of the candidates, I think because his tone is still so strident. And even if he overcame his serious personality problems, Laffey still wouldn't win the general because he's much more conservative than most Rhode Islanders. In order for a Republican to win in RI, he needs to be able to attract unaffiliated voters, and Laffey's positions and personality will keep him from doing so.

Did Laffey waffle on abortion funding? I'm not so sure. To me, it's another example of how he's in populist campaign mode within Rhode Island's borders, and in full-tilt conservative mode when he leaves the state to raise $$$.
As far as the debate, based on having heard only the first two segments, I give Chafee a split decision. But I got the impression both of them were keeping their powder dry for the TV debates.
Each emerged with something he can use down the road: Laffey's occasional bobbling of facts and Chafee's "a bad peace is better than a good war" (bad choice of words which is open to exploitation).

Chuck:

I agree with your analysis of the sizing up issue and the upcoming TV debates. This will be where the rubber meets the road.

Tabby? You Chafee people need to find some better names.

J Mahn

Dear Group,

Although I believe that Chaffee completed his task better than Laffey did his (no one "wins" these things; each candidate has a task, one of the candidates does a better job completing it)what momentum Chaffee had was lost by going negative, again, the next day.

I'm surprised that none of you have mentioned that Chaffee's "good/bad" statement could be used to justify slavery since it took a "good war" to end it.

Chuck, Joe,
What is Laffey's plan? He keeps saying he will fight the special interest, but as the NYTimes reports he is almost entirely bankrolled by a special interest group, the Club for Growth. Is that an ok special interest because they support his candidacy? How does he make his distinctions.

I would recommend that Steve Laffey try out some new talking points next time. No more "I lived the American Dream" cornball speech. I suggest he try something that is not simply a trip down memory lane - I graduated magna cum laude, I saved Cranston, I fired some old ladies, I got in needless fights with the school board, I'm great, I'm great, worship at my feet.
Instead of Dan Yorke, he should go on "Inside the Actor's Studio."

Anthony -

Please explain "universal acceptance" that Chafee won the debate - Joe Mahn above has already shown your incorrect statement and to be one who dispels untruths - quite poignant due to your frequent pro-Chafee rants.

Sir Cabot Lodge -

Clearly living the true "American dream" escapes you which explains your attempt to degrade those who are proud of it. Many RIers actually have the same desires and motivation and with a supportive government, they may realize it.

The only reason people are not more surprised about the outcome of the debate was that the weak one came out swinging, clearly not core to his own DNA and assuredly enabled by the weak hostess. Firing the crossing guards was not about saving 1/4 of 1 percent, it was about setting a tone that no more nonsensical give-aways will be tolerated. To try to hide this fact by exploiting 58 year-old women shows the lack of awareness of how bad the corruption is.

My call is that Linc's one hour of "tough guy" and Rhody "friend" stature will dissapear quickly when he realizes he has three more hours to defend his record and show what more he can do than knocking down bridges and having the NRSC do his dirty work.

Tim2

cabot lodge:

Ask and you shall receive:

The Laffey Plan

Regarding your special interest quandary. Are you just trying to sound baffled or are you actually an idiot? Yes, some special interests are bad and some are good.

The ones that use their influence and power to feather their own nest at the expense of the taxpayers by literally bullying weak politicians into giving them ridiculous benefits, outrageous pensions, health care for life, etc. etc. are bad. On the other hand the ones that fight for lower taxes, more efficient and smaller government, and less spending overall, etc. etc. are good.

I suggest you also google “false dilemma.” Maybe if you educate yourself you won’t sound so ignorant.

As far as acting goes Linc should get the Academy Award for his dramatic crying jag during debate 1 where he moaned and whimpered about being flailed, hammered, flogged, and beaten up. He must think his third rate performance will make everybody forget that he went negative first and continues to do so with reckless abandon.

Let’s talk movies:
Chafee Campaign = Titanic (you're going down)
Laffey Campaign = Gladiator (with a happier ending)

J Mahn

Bobby,

I couldn't agree more with your last comment (esp. considering our ideological differences). Chafee is basically a pacificist, and it really makes me wonder just what kind of evil it would take for Chafee to support a war. Does Chafee even believe in evil? Or is that just demagoguing or name calling?

Would he have been the lone Republican vote against the Civil War? Who's name would he have written-in in 1864, instead of Abraham Lincoln? Perhaps we should have let South Carolina go, if it will save us from war! He certainly wouldn't have voted for the Spanish-American War. Those poor Cubans! World War I ... who cares about Archduke Ferdinand anyway ... let England deal with the Kaiser. World War II ... we shouldn't be bombing Tokyo or Dresden ... those poor civilians! Korean War ... let China and Japan deal with local issues -- communist expansion isn't a threat. Great point, Bobby!

It is hysterically funny to see the Chafee folks try to compare the Club for Growth to the myriad of special interests to whom Sen. Chafee eithter kowtows or is just plain too much of a coward to fight.

The Club for Growth is an organization that supports the candidacies of congressional candidates who have a track record of support for pro-growth policies. For those of you from the Chafee camp, pro-growth is short for economic growth, something that helps EVERYBODY!

Sen. Chafee's pet special interests, NARAL, Sierra Club, the NEA, the Syria lobby, Hugo Chavez and others he's affraid to fight like the Oil and Drug companies exist for their own SPECIAL INTEREST and EVERYBODY else be damned!

Anthony, Joe, Bob, Will and Stretch: If you could send me your size maybe I could gather some Laffey Cheerleader uniforms for your.

Spodorf:

your... What?

Your a moron that's what. Grow up, be a man, and debate. Until then just do what your mother tells you, and be a good boy.

J Mahn