01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 23, 2005

My head spins from a passage in the Scott MacKay-Mark Arsenault story on Rhode Island's 2006 U.S. Senate race in The Providence Sunday Journal.

The passage shed light on why some vocal conservative Republicans who are good at raising money around the country would back Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey in a primary against incumbent Lincoln Chafee, even if it means that a Democrat winds up taking the seat over Laffey in November.

These extremists who claim a monopoly on truth consider the moderate Chafee a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, and deem him a nuisance.

But, you say -- as Democratic aspirants Sheldon Whitehouse and Matt Brown regularly note -- Chafee's membership in GOP ranks still helps the Republicans control the Senate, with all that implies for committee chairs and flow of legislation.

The GOP currently holds 55 of the 100 seats. It may seem to the right wingers that the party can afford to shed one or two lefties and, hey, no problem. But Senate control can easily turn -- in an election or even in off-years. Lose a few seats via upsets, deaths, or defections and you're staring at the precipice.

The Journal story said some conservative activists, including Maryland's Chuck Muth, president of Citizens Outreach, think scuttling Chafee would send a message to other Republican moderates to toe the line in Senate voting. Muth said that defeating Chafee in a primary might make other moderates, including Arizona's John McCain, "behave a little better" and hew to GOP orthodoxy.

It tells you how far right the Senate has veered that McCain would be considered a moderate. This war hero does have an image as a lone wolf and sometimes parts company with President Bush in high profile ways. But by Rhode Island standards, his voting record would be thought conservative, certainly much more so than Chafee's.

It may well be that conservative groups would funnel tons of money into a Laffey challenge. The result could be a backlash: I doubt that Rhode Island voters, even the exotic subsample that votes in Republican primaries, would welcome the idea that one of their senators is the target of a nationwide political assassination network.

Which reminds me. It amuses me no end that Laffey, otherwise a shameless publicity freak, refuses to be interviewed about a possible Senate bid. Like a kid in a window of an upper floor dormitory room who rains down water balloons, he prefers to take potshots at people -- in both parties, something that Sunday's story said feeds suspicions he might run as an independent.

Please, not that. As Chafee's high-wire act shows, it is challenging enough to get things done as a free-thinking member of a party, even the majority party. Rhode Islanders don't need a senator with no party.

To Chafee's credit, he was recently able to secure up to $40 million in federal pork barrel funds for a "people mover" between Green Airport and a planned railroad station.

This is not as showy as the $223 million the transportation bill allocated to Alaska for a bridge, almost as long as the Golden Gate and high enough to let cruise ships pass, between Ketchikan and a nearby island that is home to a modest airport, some timberland, and a handful of residents. Critics dub it "the bridge to nowhere."

But I'm not picky. This East Bay resident notes that Rhode Island projects for which Chafee won funding include $11 million for a new Warren bridge to carry Route 114 traffic over the Palmer River to and from Barrington.

It's also on the way to Providence or Newport. It may not be glamorous, but no one will ever call it a bridge to nowhere.

M. Charles Bakst, The Journal's political columnist, can be reached by e-mail at mbakst [at] projo.com