Laffey's Last Laugh

A rebel Republican whose cause has already won out

David Weigel | September 24, 2007

(Page 2 of 2)

"Anybody who wants to run should run," he says. "When I ran in Cranston there was a guy who filed against me as an independent because he wanted to keep a giant inflatable gorilla in his yard. Did I say to him, ‘You can't run?' No way. I debated him!"

But when I mention the Democrats' version of the Laffey-Chafee races—the Connecticut primary that turned Joe Lieberman out, he gets more specific. The party needs some purges, after all. The corrupt ones, the Ted Stevenses, have got to go. The ones who don't support the president in the war on terror should check their rear view mirrors.

"We're supposed to pine for the Rockefeller Republicans?" he says, astonished. "What was so great about the Rockefeller Republicans? What was so great about Rockefeller? The guy was a sleaze, wasn't he?"

This is, actually, what the GOP establishment believes now. Nowhere in America is the party pushing aside a Laffey-esque, Reaganite anti-taxer for a liberal Republican. They're actively pushing out the anti-war Republicans. Yet in Primary Mistake, Laffey only mentions Iraq at the end of a list of five "body blows" that felled the party in 2006. Even then it's only mentioned as a "competence" issue. That's how Laffey sees it: Not subject to debate, subject only to managerial fix-ups.

"I was the first person to call for Donald Rumsfeld to resign," Laffey says. "Major mistakes were made in the war in Iraq. It's unfortunate that the president didn't just go in there and win. Americans want to win. Ronald Reagan's vision of the Cold War was 'We win, they lose.' Americans don't agree with MoveOn.org and the other left-wing people, who are on the verge, as Charles Krauthammer very correctly wrote, of treason."

Aren't the Democrats winning now, though, because of the war? "Here's what the Democrats should have done," Laffey says. He holds up his left hand and starts sketching an invisible list on it. "They should have asked the president, ‘What do you need?' They should have asked, ‘How can we help you win this war?'"

He wanted to be a senator but he wanted the Senate to have a little less say in what the president does? "In wartime? I think it's healthy to have a debate about this. But in the end I see the president as having the power to listen in and detain people. You don't want to let these people out. You let them out, and they go back out there and they try to kill you again? Huh? What's that?" He lifts up both his hands expectantly, as if something's going to fall out of the sky and make sense of it for him.

Laffey buttons up his sleeves and returns to his main points. The problem with the Republican Party isn't the war. It's political desperation, it's sleaze, it's a president who doesn't know how to veto spending. I've just shown him Mitt Romney's new TV ad (Laffey has endorsed Giuliani), where the former governor of Massachusetts laces into the GOP for "acting like Democrats" and not controlling their spending or their scandals. "That's powerful stuff. Think what would have happened if they'd been saying this before!"

This Laffey's paradox: He's an outsider with the ideology of an insider. Republicans aren't in a 1976 situation where moderate and conservative wings are debating what the party stands for. The party is unified: Anti-tax, anti-spending, pro-life, girded for an expansive and long-running war on terror. There is no future for the Lincoln Chafee types who challenge that dogma. The foreign policy and tax debates are over.

Laffey himself is going to work to elect Rudy Giuliani president of the United States and then try to return to politics. "The governorship is open in 2010," he points out, hailing a cab. He's kept ElectLaffey.com operative and stands a far better chance at winning office when foreign policy and George W. Bush's record won't be on voter's minds. The rest of his party will have to worry about that.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

Comments

|9.24.07 @ 1:59PM|#

Mr. Weigel, you meant Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, not "mayor," right?

|9.24.07 @ 2:12PM|#

Where's the live blogging from Columbia U right now?? You mean I have to go to the Times for this...

|9.24.07 @ 2:14PM|#

As the 12 steppers are wont to say: Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

|9.24.07 @ 2:16PM|#

Attention Karl Rove: Your getting your permanent Republican Democatic majority. You happy now?

rho|9.24.07 @ 2:45PM|#

I'm sick to death of "we have to win in Iraq!" No shit. Problem is, we don't know what "win" means in Iraq; and if we did, nobody knows how to do it without acting like assholes and bombing the place flat.

That said, the Party will kill itself before it allows change in inter-party politics. The GOP is cooked.

|9.24.07 @ 3:23PM|#

The party is unified: Anti-tax, anti-spending...

Huh? The current crop of GOP politicians, taken as a whole, are wishy-washy on taxes and absolutely love spending other people's money. The only reason the base hasn't abandoned their party for the Democrats, is that the other side is even worse. The GOP has become the "lesser of two greater evils" party.

|9.24.07 @ 3:53PM|#

The Party is unified.....

Like Brandybuck says, Huh? The GOP doesn't seem to have any problem spending tons of money on unconstitutional things and are barely better than the Democrats if at all. The fact that the establishment is against Ron Paul indicates what an abysmal party the GOP has become. So he voted against the Iraq war, (which in hindsight makes lots of sense) but on spending, taxes, and regulations, you won't find a more principled and conservative person.

deron|9.24.07 @ 5:28PM|#

The only unifying factors left for the GOP are rhetoric, and not being Democrats.

SIV|9.24.07 @ 6:46PM|#

The only unifying factors left for the GOP are rhetoric, and not being Democrats.

They are pretty good on those qualities though.
When you listen to the speeches at the convention they sound like prudish pro-war libertarians.

|9.24.07 @ 8:41PM|#

When you listen to the speeches at the convention they sound like prudish pro-war libertarians.

...interspersed with those lovely little rounds of "flip-flop" chanting...

I can't wait until 2008!

[/sarcasm]

|9.24.07 @ 8:50PM|#

It's unfortunate that the president didn't just go in there and win.

Ah! Why wasn't this guy on the Bush strategery team during the invasion, so his brilliant tactic of just going in and winning could have been implemented?

Americans want to win. Ronald Reagan's vision of the Cold War was 'We win, they lose.'

If there's any justice, an undead Reagan is crawling out of his grave to seek vengeance against this Laffey character.

Gene Berkman|9.24.07 @ 8:56PM|#

So Laffey does not like Nelson Rockefeller, but he supports Rudy Giuliani for President.

Someone should tell him that Giuliani was backed by the Liberal Party all three times he ran for Mayor; his administration of New York City was even more free spending than Rockefeller's years as Governor of New York, and Giuliani is not just a liberal, he backed Mario Cuomo for Governor of New York.

|9.24.07 @ 11:15PM|#

Laffey blames everyone but himself for his defeat last September, and that's been his modus operandi for quite some time. He can blame the NRSC all he wants, but he still lost his home district to Chafee. The people just didn't love the populist as much as Laffey's convinced himself they did.

Elemenope|9.25.07 @ 8:50AM|#

I'm a Rhode Island native and a resident. I'm registered independent, and like many others as the article indicated I voted in the Republican primary for Chafee. Laffey was a nutball in every conceivable sense; unnecessarily belligerent, not well versed on issues, and kind of a nasty guy in general. An asshat, if you will.

Chafee was well-liked in the state, and he only lost by a hair following the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in 2006. Had the Republican Party not gone schizo in the primary and abandoned Chafee, he would have easily won, and the Republicans would still have control of the Senate.

|9.25.07 @ 12:52PM|#

"The party is unified: Anti-tax, anti-spending..." this is the kind of analysis that can get you a term membership at the CFR ....good work....and very nice touch , saying that "rockfeller is bad" very nice.

this magazine is a sham I can feel it who is it that helps this propaganda get through.

I just wish there was more attention paid to the fact that all of the media-hyped candidates are members of the CFR.


I hope you have heard of Clinton's much respected professor Carroll Quigley , here he states the nearly obvious idea that a group can get it's goals reached by controlling two parties and let them disagree on hyped up "political football" issues like gay marriage:


"The chief problem of American political life...has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

The goals of the CFR is best described by its very own members. Bill Clinton's Georgetown mentor and CFR member Carroll Quigley states: "The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of a society which originated in England... (and) ...believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one world rule established."

You must know all this stuff as you write about politics for a living. Are you scared to write about it and inform the people? It is certainly interesting stuff.

|9.25.07 @ 1:40PM|#

do you call him a rebel of the republicans because he likes women?


nevemind, anyone who orders soup and a wedge of lettuce is a prime canidate for the the andavor male cheerleading fan club.

|9.25.07 @ 4:51PM|#

Hey, when's the next Reason Posters Writing Skills Workshop? Is it still being held at Bohemian Grove?

Tom Blanton|9.25.07 @ 11:12PM|#

I'm still wondering how it is that Laffey, another Republican crypto-fascist, go the last laugh. He lost. Is he laughing because he correctly predicted that Chafee would lose? That's not such a great feat. Lots of Republicans lost.

|9.26.07 @ 11:12AM|#

Brandy, do you think a real libertarian would write a article praising this pro-war, pro-no big governemnt laffey jerk?

Mike Reason|9.28.07 @ 12:32PM|#

Weigel doesn't understand that while Laffey has the same ideology as the insider Republicans, he probably means it. Alot of Republicans in Congress have talked tough on illegal immigration, fiscal responsibility, and the war, but when they get elected they compromise on every issue. A number of congressional Republicans are a bunch of pork masters with no sense of priority and spend billions of dollars that we don't have. The Republican leadership backed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform plan and derided their base as "nativists" and "bigots" because we were opposed to the idea of turning this country into a bilingual, manorial state. Finally, look at the number of Republicans who have defected to the retreat crowd, such as Luger. Some of the Republicans are worse surrender monkeys than the Democrat leadership.

Riomarcos|10.3.07 @ 5:07PM|#

I'm a pro-choice, anti-war, Republican. Laffey doesn't stand for my ideals, neither does he represent real Republican ideals. What Greenspan was saying was absolutely true. We went from being the party of small government and lower taxes to being the party of gay bashing, anti-immigrant hysteria and religious fanaticism. How the hell are you supposed to have a small, Federalist government without separation of Church and State? I think I'll just vote Libertarian until the Republican party comes back to its Reaganite common sense, if that ever happens...