LINCOLN CHAFEE ENDORSES OBAMA-- WHY THIS MEANS SOMETHING

Chafee knows McCain well-- endorses Obama

As expected, and right on cue, Willard Romney, like many Republican Party hacks who once claimed they were standing on some sort of right-wing version of "principle," have come out and endorsed a third term for George Bush in the thinly disguised personification of John McCain. Yawn...

Far more interesting today was Lincoln Chafee's surprise endorsement of Barack Obama. Had Chafee switched parties in 2005 or even 2006, he would still be a Rhode Island senator today. Instead he decided to remain a Republican and fight an increasingly lonely battle as a moderate in a party over-run with extremists and radical right maniacs. Chafee was the only Republican to vote against Bush's rush to war. He was the only Republican to vote against Bush and Cheney on many issues in fact. He has now changed from being a Republican to being an independent.

In his upcoming book, Chafee criticizes Democrats who supported the resolution to authorize the war, saying a vote for the war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment. In backing Obama, the former senator said the nation cannot afford another presidential election with two candidates who supported the war.

If that sounds like a slap at Hillary and his old colleague John McCain, it was. He told the Providence Journal this morning that their respective positions on the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the decisive factor in his decision to endorse Obama. He called Obama and offered to help him campaign in Rhode Island, which has a primary the same day as Texas and Ohio.

In his book, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President, Chafee excoriates not just the GOP, but Democrats like Clinton who acted as enablers for the Bush Cheney agenda in Iraq.

The book excoriates Mr. Bush and his GOP allies who repeatedly fanned such wedge issues as changing the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, abortion and flag-burning. But he saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq. That includes New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Chafee says put her presidential ambitions above standing up to Mr. Bush and the rush to war in Iraq.

“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee. “Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against prosecuting the war. “The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,” writes Chafee. “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

“Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.”

Chafee writes of his surprise at “how quickly key Democrats crumbled.” Democratic senators, Chafee writes, “went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration’s nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?”

Unlike members of his own party, Democratic senators were not getting the influence, home-state goodies, White House invites and Congressional pork that goes with being in the majority. The Democrats had learned not to trust Mr. Bush before the Twin Towers and the Pentagon burst into flame on Sept. 11.

A bewildered Chafee, seeking an explanation, turned to an unnamed Democratic senator [Jack Reed] who opposed the war but was well-respected by his party’s leaders. This senator tells Chafee “in confidence” what concerned the Democrats. “They are afraid the war will be over as fast as Gulf One. Few will die, the oil will flow and gasoline will cost 90 cents a gallon.”

Obama could not have asked for, or even dreamt of, a better endorsement going into the Rhode Island primary than the one he just got from Chafee.