{"id":6868,"date":"2006-03-16T10:40:02","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T15:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6868"},"modified":"2006-03-16T10:40:02","modified_gmt":"2006-03-16T15:40:02","slug":"just-how-much-does-linc-chafee-dislike-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/just-how-much-does-linc-chafee-dislike-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Just how much does Linc Chafee dislike Bush?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) announced before the 2004 election that he would not vote for Bush-Cheney<\/a>, we got a sense that Rhode Island’s junior senator isn’t the president’s biggest fan. But would Chafee, up for re-election in a very “blue” state, actually support Russ Feingold’s censure resolution? It’s at least possible.<\/p>\n

Early yesterday, Chafee offered some praise<\/a> for Feingold, saying the resolution would be “positive” if it fueled debate over the legality of some policies in the war on terrorism. But according to the Providence Journal, Chafee’s home-town newspaper, the Republican senator won’t rule out voting for the measure<\/a> on the Senate floor.<\/p>\n

Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, who cast a protest vote against President Bush’s reelection in 2004, says he won’t rule out support for what he calls the “drastic” penalty of a formal Senate censure of Mr. Bush.<\/p>\n

Chafee agrees with Sen. Russell D. Feingold that the president acted illegally when he launched an antiterrorism program of warrantless wiretaps of some U.S. citizens, he said Tuesday. But Chafee, a Republican, currently does not support the Wisconsin Democrat’s proposal to punish the president with a censure, he said.<\/p>\n

“Everything should occur in steps,” Chafee said in an interview citing, for instance, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the wiretapping program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Asked directly whether he’d support a censure resolution, Chafee demurred. “I know you want me to go there,” Chafee said, but he did not answer the question directly. The paper added, however that “Chafee said he does not rule out an eventual decision to back the censure resolution.”<\/p>\n

I wonder how many phone calls Chafee is going to receive today from the White House and the congressional GOP leaders. For that matter, I wonder how many of Chafee’s constituents may call, urging him in the other direction. And how this might affect his GOP primary fight is anyone’s guess.<\/p>\n

It’s not likely, but wouldn’t it be an encouraging Dem talking point if the party could say there’s “bi-partisan” support for a presidential censure?
\n
\nPost Script<\/i>: For the record, here’s what Chafee said yesterday morning, when he praised the resolution as a “positive” move.<\/p>\n

“At least it’s accomplishing getting it into the public awareness. Because nobody, in Rhode Island anyway, is talking about the issue. And I think that’s positive. The American public — if they’re going to make a decision to allow illegal activity because we’re in a war on terror, then I think that’s an important debate we should be having.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chafee equivocated a little after the comments were published, but his comments are clearly complementary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) announced before the 2004 election that he would not vote for Bush-Cheney, we got a sense that Rhode Island’s junior senator isn’t the president’s biggest fan. But would Chafee, up for re-election in a very “blue” state, actually support Russ Feingold’s censure resolution? It’s at least possible. Early yesterday, Chafee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}