Insurgent Republicans

The Club for Growth wants to create a free market GOP, whether the party likes it or not.

David Weigel from the December 2006 issue

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/p> p>“Do we know where those numbers are from?” asks the club’s executive director, David Keating. “Are they from his precincts?” o:p> /o:p> /p> p>“It looks bad everywhere,” Toomey says, putting down a cell phone and returning to his plate. Laffey ends up losing, 54 to 46. o:p> /o:p> /p> p> Hopes had been high for the Rhode Island span class="dropcap">primary. After watching a once-obscure millionaire named Ned Lamont upset Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman in neighboring Connecticut, political junkies were talking up the Laffey-Chafee race as a gladiator match of Republican philosophies and a test of the Club for Growth’s power. To its opponents’ delight, the club failed the test . The Providence Journal editorialized against the group’s “pretty nasty” anti-Chafee ads. The Economist