01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 30, 2005

IF CONVENTIONAL wisdom is correct, a disaster is brewing for the Rhode Island Republican Party -- and his name is Stephen Laffey. The populist Cranston mayor, in his Ahab-like quest for a U.S. Senate seat in 2006, appears ready to split the party and elect a Democrat.

The White House, no doubt, wishes Mr. Laffey would shrivel up and blow away -- which seems paradoxical, given that the Cranston mayor is probably the state's most pro-Bush major politician.

Karl Rove is sliding all his chips on incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who, while nominally a Republican, refused to even vote for President Bush in 2004. And, in the Senate, Mr. Chafee has been a needling critic of the president, giving frequent aid and comfort to the Democrats, much to the delight of most Rhode Islanders.

But Boss Rove, who worries about maintaining GOP control of the Senate, obviously figures that an anti-Bush liberal is about the best that the Republicans can hope to pry out of Rhode Island.

In his apparent calculus -- and it is hard to see how it is wrong -- the left-leaning Senator Chafee (who enjoys strong union support) would stand a much better chance than the right-leaning Mayor Laffey (who doesn't) of keeping the seat Republican in November 2006. So the national GOP will pour in a fortune in a desperate attempt to prop up Senator Chafee in the primary.

That effort is already fomenting a mini-civil war. Before Mayor Laffey has even announced, a steaming, bubbling fissure in the state GOP has opened up.

The Republican National Committee is trying to funnel $500,000 to Senator Chafee by means of providing the state GOP with a sophisticated voter-identification system. That has Mr. Laffey's forces fuming. Indeed, his hand-picked national committeeman Robert Manning refused to sign off on the gift -- an approval required under party rules -- unless it is available to all Republican candidates.

Meanwhile, the anti-Laffey forces bawled that the mayor is putting himself ahead of some fellow Republicans, by blocking that money, since the voter I.D. system could be exploited in Republican state legislative campaigns. They warned that the national Republicans may pick up their ball and go home rather than play in a state as disorganized and infested with conflict as Rhode Island.

That division reflects a deep philosophical rift. The Old Guard, which supports Senator Chafee, accepts that the GOP here is so outmuscled and outnumbered that it will never be able to do much more than cut deals with Democrats and pick off a seat here and there.

The Young Turks believe that it is time to do more, to shake up the status quo in Rhode Island. Mr. Laffey has carefully cultivated them, working nights and weekends attending fundraisers throughout the state and helping candidates campaign. He brags that, while GOP registration has declined throughout Rhode Island, it has grown in Cranston under his leadership. (Something of a false boast, perhaps -- many of those "Republicans" are true-blue Democrats who switched affiliation as part of a union plot to elect a puppet candidate in Cranston's GOP mayoral primary last September!)

As a result, Mr. Laffey is immensely popular with the Republican base. If the GOP primary were held today, he would surely beat Senator Chafee.

Mayor Laffey believes that he could then go on and win the general election over either former state Atty. Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse (who, while a proven administrator, is a wooden campaigner, hampered at times by a tendency toward pomposity; he has already blurted out that he was "bred" for leadership) or wet-behind-the-ears Secretary of State Matt Brown. While it is true that many a successful politician has gained power by boldly defying the odds, and that one underestimates Mr. Laffey at his own peril, I just can't see it.

Strike one: Mayor Laffey's politics are more those of a strident Southern conservative than of a pliable Republican favored in these parts.

Strike two: His Democratic opponent, wooden or not, would have the full weight of the unions behind him.

Strike three: Mr. Laffey woefully lacks the personal qualities of moderation, restraint and noblesse oblige that Rhode Islanders often associate with a senator. (Note the series of bluebloods, some smarter than others, that they have elected to the post.) The mayor's take-no-prisoners populism would be much more acceptable at the State House, which voters know could use being "blown up" by a smart, fearless and details-oriented administrator.

The Republicans desperately tried to "buy off" Mr. Laffey by offering to support him for the powerless (and pointless) job of lieutenant governor. White House political operative Sara Taylor -- known as "Karl Rove's right hand" -- tried to talk Mayor Laffey into running for something else than senator.

No go. Mr. Laffey, like Captain Ahab, seems intent on harpooning the white whale, whatever the consequences.

In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Ahab gets his prey, but loses his life, and the wounded and enraged beast sinks his ship. Only one survivor bobs up, clinging to a "coffin-like" buoy.

In Rhode Island, the survivor's name could well be U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Edward Achorn is The Journal's deputy editorial-pages editor (eachorn [at] projo.com).