{"id":2676,"date":"2004-10-04T11:52:23","date_gmt":"2004-10-04T16:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2676.html"},"modified":"2004-10-04T11:52:23","modified_gmt":"2004-10-04T16:52:23","slug":"chafee-talking-to-jeffords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/chafee-talking-to-jeffords\/","title":{"rendered":"Chafee ‘talking’ to Jeffords"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times appears to have buried the lede today in its story about Sen. Lincoln Chafee<\/a> (R-R.I.). The Times emphasizes what we already know: he won’t vote for Bush on Election Day. The story, however, included a lot of interesting information about Chafee’s future.<\/p>\n

For example, Chafee has been talking about his options with Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), who left the GOP in 2001.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chafee insists he has no intention of defecting. But it is no secret that Democrats would welcome him, and already, Mr. Jeffords is offering him counsel.<\/p>\n

“I understand the feelings that he has,” Mr. Jeffords said. “I’m going to be talking to him, so I’m not going to say any more. I probably shouldn’t have even told you that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, Jim, sure you should have! It raises an important point — Chafee doesn’t have to literally become a Dem. He could follow in Jeffords footsteps, leave the GOP, declare himself an Independent, and caucus<\/i> with the Dems. Jeffords seems to enjoy his independent status; I suspect Chafee would, too.<\/p>\n

Regardless, this is a man who is clearly facing a conflict of conscience.<\/p>\n

He says he is waiting for the moderate wing of the party to rise again; in the meantime, he was asked if he went to bed at night wondering how he could remain a Republican.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he said, “I don’t deny that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A man who lies awake at night wondering how he can stay a Republican is a man unlikely to stay a Republican.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times appears to have buried the lede today in its story about Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.). The Times emphasizes what we already know: he won’t vote for Bush on Election Day. The story, however, included a lot of interesting information about Chafee’s future. For example, Chafee has been talking about his options […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}