Chaffee to consider throwing Bolton under a truck

In order for any of Bush's nominations to get a full vote in the Senate, they first have to make it out of committee... a committee which currently has ten Republicans and eight Democrats on it. Just by the numbers, you'd think that every Bush nominee is golden, right?

Not so fast. The nomination of avowed UN hater John Bolton to be our ambassador to the UN might be hitting some rocky road very shortly. One of the Republicans on the committee is Lincoln Chaffee (R- RI) who is quite moderate and often sides with Olympia Snowe and the few other moderates in the party. Chaffee is now sending signals that he might side with the Dems in opposing Bolton's nomination. That would put the committee in a 9-9 tie and the Bolton nomination would never make it to the floor.

Senator Lincoln Chafee's office said yesterday that his constituency is ''overwhelmingly" opposed to the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, signaling that Chafee is leaning against supporting Bolton in a move that could derail the nomination.

If Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joins with Democrats who are expected to unanimously oppose the nomination, Republicans will not have enough votes to send the confirmation to the Senate floor.

Chaffee comes form a quite liberal state, and apparently there has been some expensive, high pressure activity going on back home to try to influence him in this call.

In recent days, Chafee's Washington office has received about 500 calls and e-mails about Bolton's nomination, and fewer than 10 of them supported Bolton, said Stephen Hourahan, the senator's press secretary.

''We are overwhelmingly hearing from the people of Rhode Island that they are opposed to the Bolton nomination," said Hourahan, who said that Chafee is still undecided about Bolton. But he said that, in the past, Chafee ''has voted mostly with the people of Rhode Island's interests in mind."

Citizens for Global Solutions, a national grass-roots group that advocates for international institutions, including the United Nations, has spent about $20,000 in Rhode Island to air a television ad against Bolton on Fox News, NBC, CBS, and two radio stations, according to Harpinder Athwal, communications director for the group.

You can find out more about Citizens for Global Solutions at their web site and toss them some support if you wish.

The Corner Kids are having absolute conniptions over this, as you might imagine. "Then I saw it was Lincoln Chafee. At which time I realized I had forgotten he still called himself one." [A Republican]

The Liquid List has a decent analysis, including:

I wonder: If Bolton loses, or if Chafee loses to a Dem in 2006, will the GOP start to rethink their alliance with the Christian Right? Very possibly other moderate New England Republicans, like Snowe and Collins in Maine, could see their once solid support erode simply due to the actions of their party-mates in Texas or Kansas. If American history tells us anything, it is that the overreaching, power-crazed parties always fall when people finally wake up and push the pendulum back in the other direction.