WASHINGTON

SENATOR LINCOLN CHAFEE'S recent comments ("Anger at his own party: Chafee blames the GOP's right wing for his defeat," news, Nov. 10) make clear that he is as baffled as he is bitter about his recent loss.

We can't help with the bitterness, but the reason for the loss is not that complicated. Chafee ran as a virtual Democrat and, as they usually will, the voters choose the real thing instead of the faux politician.

Chafee has long deluded himself into believing that the only Republican who can win in Rhode Island is one who rejects all the ideas and principles of the Republican Party. His defeat, on the very day that conservative Republican Governor Carcieri was re-elected, proves that he is exactly wrong.

Chafee has tried to blame his loss on the spirited primary he faced. Wrong again. The vast majority of the ads the Club for Growth PAC ran against him during the primary criticized his opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his advocacy for excessive spending. After he won the primary, what did his own general election ads tout? His opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his advocacy for pork-barrel spending.

Chafee also accused me of a falsehood for telling him that the Club for Growth wouldn't get in a primary election if we didn't think we could win the general. There was nothing false about that comment.

Since we first considered the Rhode Island Senate race, we believed that either Senator Chafee or Mayor Stephen Laffey would have an uphill, but potentially winnable, general election race. I still think the anti-Washington, anti-establishment, populist Laffey would have had at least as good a chance, especially in this election's anti-incumbent environment, as the ultimate establishment, pseudo-Democrat Chafee.

As America's leading political advocates for economic growth through limited government, lower taxes, less wasteful spending and the free-enterprise system, the Club for Growth's 40,000 members, and its political-action committee, strongly disagree with Senator Chafee's long litany of anti-growth, high-tax-and-spend liberal positions. The fact that he has been, so far, a nominal Republican, doesn't change those facts.

And it evidently didn't impress Rhode Island voters, either.

Pat Toomey is president of The Club for Growth.