Lincoln Chafee's handling of the Alito nomination reveals a failure to understand a political maxim that, "you can't make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends."
In opposing Alito, Chafee may have thought he was "reaching across party lines" to Democrats. He may have even naively thought he would be rewarded by them. Wrong.
Democrats have a funny way of repaying Republicans who help them. William Lynch, the RI Democrat Chairman, has actually criticized Chaffee for not being more vocal in his opposition to Alito, "Lincoln Chafee once again ensured his irrelevancy by sitting out of the fight to oppose the lifetime appointment of a Supreme Court nominee who will dramatically shift the ideology of the court towards the extreme right…" (Pawtucket Times).
So if Chafee hoped his appeasement would win him friends on the Democrat side, he was mistaken. They want that seat, too.
Of course, Chafee’s vote against Alito also serves to bolster Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey’s Republican primary campaign against Chafee. Let’s face it, if you were on the fence about who to support in that race, Chafee’s vote against Alito sealed the deal. I would venture to say that most of Laffey’s supporters are simply hoping to get back at Chafee.
So, in one fell swoop, Chafee has managed to offend both Democrats and Republicans.
This is all further proof that, in trying to be all things to all people, you often end up alienating everybody.
As they say in Texas, "There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos."
