Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) "Nobody's Perfect"
Thu Oct 26, 2006 at 09:01:13 AM PDT
Any doubts that Lincoln Chafee is a "real" Republican must have been laid to rest yesterday when he chose to associate his increasingly sleazy campaign with a serial abuser of women, Antonio R. Freitas. It is a measure of how desperate his campaign has become that he is willing to stake his argument for re-election on the word of a man twice convicted of battering women. It is one thing for Freitas, a man with an axe to grind against the prosecutor (Whitehouse) who twice put him behind bars, to spout such nonsense, but for Chafee to associate himself with Freitas' absurd conspiracy theories does a disservice to his office and the people of Rhode Island. But then as Lincoln Chafee so cavalierly said about Freitas yesterday, "nobody's perfect." Perhaps not, but Rhode Island can do better.
It seems Chafee has taken another play from Karl Rove's playbook by attacking his opponent's greatest strength. What is perhaps most outrageous about Chafee accusing Whitehouse of insider dealing and corruption is that Whitehouse was an earlier backer of the Separation of Powers Act in Rhode Island.
Whitehouse took a stand that was unpopular among many Democratic bigwigs in Rhode Island because he believed that a major source of corruption in Rhode Island politics was the fact that the legislature had too much power. This stand likely cost him the Party's endorsement in his 2002 run for Governor when he lost to Mryth York by fewer than 1,000 votes in the primary. Had he not taken that stand he would likely be Governor of RI today. H. Philip West, Jr., Executive Director of the corruption watchdog group, Common Cause RI has said that Whitehouse "deserves as much credit as anyone" for pushing the the Separation of Powers Act.
Chafee has really climbed deep into the gutter on this one, and whatever remaining respect many Rohode Islanders might have had for the man is gone. Considering Chafee hired the wife of convicted felon and phone-jammer James Tobin to work on his campaign, and had a staffer who was regular in Jack Abramoff's skybox at the MCI center, you wouldn't think he would want to make corruption the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. But then, "nobody's perfect" right Linc?
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