Chafee

PROVIDENCE –– Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee yesterday refused to back down from his assertion that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a “cocky whacko.”

Chafee, a former Republican lawmaker who now supports the Democrat’s presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, joined the ranks of Obama supporters playing defense in recent days after criticizing the Alaska governor.

It took two days for Chafee’s comment, which he made Tuesday, to make headlines.

The remarks hit local blogs yesterday morning, fueled in part by a YouTube video that captured the controversial statement. By yesterday afternoon, the former Rhode Island senator’s name was splashed across media Web sites from France to California.

The budding controversy began at a Tuesday appearance at the Washington think tank, the New America Foundation, when a reporter asked Chafee about Palin’s influence on the presidential race.

“She seems to have taken a lackluster McCain candidacy and energized it. And that’s the Karl Rove strategy,” Chafee said Tuesday. “They’ve just thrown this firestorm, this tornado into the whole presidential election.”

Chafee said he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention had also energized Democrats.

“People were coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, e-mails were coming in –– ‘I just sent money to Obama, I couldn’t sleep last night … to see this cocky whacko up there.’ ”

The comment caught the New America Foundation moderator by surprise: “Did you just say cocky whacko? I just love those lines,” he said.

Prompted by local media inquiries, Chafee held an impromptu news conference yesterday in front of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, where he is a visiting fellow. He said he did not regret the comment.

“It was just an honest response to a question,” Chafee said. “Banning books? That’s wacky to me … And certainly anybody that saw her convention speech would say that that’s a cocky woman.”

Chafee was referencing allegations that Palin, when mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, asked the city librarian repeatedly whether she would allow books to be censored. The librarian said she would not, according to media reports at the time. The librarian was fired a few months later, although the censorship issue was not cited as a reason.

Obama tried to distance himself from Chafee’s remarks yesterday.

“Senator Chafee’s comments about Governor Palin do not reflect the views of Senator Obama, Senator Biden or our campaign,” Obama’s Northeast Communications Director Gannet Tseggai wrote in an e-mail.

But Tseggai noted that Chafee would continue to campaign for Obama.

On Wednesday, for example, Chafee participated in interviews coordinated by the Obama campaign with stations in Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin. Chafee also traveled to Florida last week to stump for Obama.

“Senator Chafee will continue to campaign for us because he can effectively make the case that Obama has what it takes to bring Democrats and Republicans together to get things done in Washington, D.C.,” Tseggai wrote.

McCain’s New England communications director, Jeff Grappone, declined to respond immediately to the remarks. Nor did he grant an interview request with Palin.

It’s unclear if Chafee’s comments will have any impact on the presidential contest, according to Maureen Moakley, University of Rhode Island political science professor.

“Certainly, it’s not going to make much difference in Rhode Island,” she said, noting Chafee’s “endearing, unpredictable qualities.” “For Rhode Islanders, they’ve come to expect this type of thing.”

Chafee isn’t the only politician to draw fire for criticizing Palin.

South Carolina’s Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler said Wednesday that McCain picked a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” She later apologized.

Obama himself was criticized for his “You can put lipstick on a pig” comment Tuesday night in Virginia, according to the Associated Press. “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”

Although Obama had not mentioned Palin, some listeners heard his remark in the context of her Republican National Convention speech: The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, she joked to laughter and cheers, is “lipstick.”

University of Virginia Political Science Prof. Larry Sabato said Chafee’s comment is symptomatic of a larger problem for Obama: “Again, it just tells us that the Obama campaign still has not come up with a strategy for dealing with Palin,” he said. “They’re all over the lot.”

—With reports from John E. Mulligan of The Journal Washington Bureau

speoples@projo.com