Ok I have a soft spot for Lincoln Chafee, the ousted Republican now turned Independent senator of RI who is now a prominent member of Republicans for Obama (along with Jim Leach and Susan Eisenhower).
I always thought had he changed his party ID before the election, he would have kept his job. He had an outstanding approval rating (on the election in which he lost, he had a 63% approval ratings).
For those of you who don't know him, he is a soft spoken, pro-choice, prius-driving environmentalist who opposed John Bolton's appointment when he was in the senate. Someone I don't agree with on everything (mainly on fiscal policy) but have enormous respect for.
Voting against him was an extremely hard decision for RI.
I saw a link to this interview with him on the "HuffPo", during which he says a few interesting things:
On Bush-Cheney:
Hearing his words "I'm a uniter not a divider, We will have a humble foreign policy" these were the promises I expected him to keep. Foolish me... "We will regulate the carbon dioxide" these were the comments that the candidate for the US president made. and from day one [he] went back on those promises.
On bipartisan-ship:
I think that's what the American people want ultimately. And Senator Obama, certainly, through his primary campaign was very careful in not shredding his opponent because he knew that ultimately we all have to work together.
On restoring America's credibility domestically:
Number one [issue] is our credibility: It seems as if it's Ok not to be honest with American people; whether it's torture or warrant-less wiretapping or as I mentioned earlier "I'm a uniter not a divider".. These are all words with nothing behind them.. It's not Ok to be dishonest.
and Internationally:
We are a confident strong country. We can deal with friend and foe alike. We are a strong confident country. It's not an kind of a liability to talk to anybody...
On Sarah palin:
I do think she is dangerous for the future of the country having such limited experience and sharing that aggressive, belligerent approach to the world.That's not in our long term best interests. It's a dangerous planet -- nuclear weapons -- a tremendous capacity of destruction exists.
It's going to take some wisdom and ability to see gray sometimes, and lessons of the Cold War are that sometimes containment can work.
New generations come along, the Gorbachevs come along -- and we haven't fired missiles at each other and killed each other.
That's the lesson of the Cold War we seem to have ignored, Lessons that worked.
Also else where on her (around 53:00)
She seems to have taken the lackluster McCain candidacy and energized it and that's the Karl Rove strategy. I mean, watching her give the speech I am saying Karl Rove, these people, are brilliant. They have just thrown this firestorm, this tornado into the whole presidential election. The surprise that I didn't expect, that seemed to occur the next day, after her speech, was that it possibly energized the wrong base, the left. People coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, emails coming in that "I just sent money to Obama, I couldn't sleep seeing that cocky whacko up there"
The moderator asked him "Did you just say Cocky Whacko?", and Chafee just smiled.