Wow. The Republican Party is running attack ads against Stephen Laffey, the Cranston mayor challenging Sen. Chafee in the GOP primary.
The sound you may soon hear is the first [Rhode Island] TV attack ad of this campaign season.
The expected target: Republican Cranston Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Stephen P. Laffey .
A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee said late last week that "the NRSC is going up with a substantial ad buy" today.
While details were still under wraps last week, spokesman Brian Nick said that the 30-second spot would match his record as the onetime president of a Memphis, Tenn., investment banking firm up against the image he portrays in his own ads.
While party committees take sides in primaries all the time (which they shouldn't), running attack ads against one of their own seems like an act of desperation.
The NRSC must have polling that shows 1) Laffey seriously threatening Chafee, and 2) Laffey getting his ass kicked by either Democratic challenger.
So Dole's NRSC is lagging in fundraising, can't recruit good candidates to save its life, and is spending its meager resources to attack other Republicans.
Movement conservatives can't be having a good day. First, Bush abandons them on the Supreme Court for the second time this year in favor of the type of cronyism that gave us Mike Brown. Then, Dole's NRSC goes after one of their own in defense of Chafee, widely seen as a RINO in conservative circles. Throw the Earle, Fitzgerald, and SEC investigations into the mix, and they must be despondent.