Extra! Extra! Republicans Support Lincoln!

It's a strange political year. In Rhode Island, the national GOP finds itself in the position of supporting an apostate -- Lincoln Chafee, who opposes tax cuts, opposed the Iraq war, and who deviates with his party's center on a host of social issues -- at the expense of someone far more in tune with the party's mainstream -- Stephen Laffey, the conservative mayor of Cranston. The reason? If Chafee, one of only two Republican Senators to be elected from Rhode Island since the Depression (the other was his late father, John Chafee) loses, the odds are that he will be waxed by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Republican officials are so sure about Laffey's impending destruction if he wins that the party will pull out of Rhode Island to devote scarce resources to other races. If someone had said four years ago that the party would have put its weight behind Chafee in a primary battle against a more conservative member of the party, members on both sides of the aisle would have laughed. Chafee is unpopular within his own party and is largely seen as an affable lightweight by Democrats. These are not good times for the Republican Party, especially in states where it has struggled and gained a toehold in the decades since Ronald Reagan declared Morning in America.