Lincoln Chafee Quelches Bolton Nomination, May leave Republican Party. Update: Senator hints he may have supported nomination if re-elected.

Lincoln Chafee might leave Republican party according to his remarks at a press conference chronicled in a report by the AP found at the Los Angeles Times site "R.I. Senator May Leave Republican Party".

Excerpt:

"I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," Chafee said at a news conference. When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the GOP, he replied: "That's fair."

Chafee, 53, is a lifelong Republican who has represented Rhode Island for seven years. His father held the same seat for 23 years before that.

He is the most liberal Republican in the Senate and was the sole Senate Republican to vote against the war in Iraq. But that was not enough to prevail against Whitehouse, who shared many of Chafee's views but was a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state.

(Someplace else noted that Chafee voted with the Republican majority over 87% of the time.)

Lincoln will leave America with a gift, the final squashing of John Bolton's hope of becoming a real ambassador to the UN.  (Another FL recount villain bites the dust.)

From Steve Clemons of The Washington Note at TPM Cafe:

Word has just reached me from a well-placed source that the White House has continued to push John Bolton's confirmation prospects as US Ambassador to the United Nations despite the election outcome.

Another highly placed source has informed me that in just a few minutes Senator Lincoln Chafee is calling a press conference to state categorically that he will not support John Bolton's confirmation in the upcoming lame duck session.

This "news conference mentioned by Mr. Clemons might have been the one reported on in the AP article linked near the top of the page, but if you read the article you will find no mention of John Bolton.  I'm not calling Clemons a liar or worse a person with bad resources though sometimes sources do make mistakes.  And I wouldn't even if I hadn't found a BBC article that seems to show that Chafee did talk about Bolton either at that news conference or at a second one he had the same day, though I guess there is a slight possibility that the BBC reporter called up Chafee and got a one on one, but that's not likely given Clemon's source.

From BBC report  "US envoy to UN 'set to lose job'":

Lincoln Chaffee, who was defeated by his Democrat rival in Rhode Island this week, said it would be illogical to change his stance at the last minute.

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those fronts is on foreign policy," Mr Chaffee said.

"And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoken out against."

I wish the BBC reporter had told of the actual conditions under which he got the statement from Chafee.  Is the AP embargoing news, and if so, why.

Since more and more of our news is coming from the AP I'd like to know.

BTW, in order to not confuse the source of comments on Chafee and Bolton I did not link to The Washington Note above.  You can find a link on my sidebar under Best of the rest on the Internet.

The Washington Post article "Bolton May Not Return As U.N. Envoy" indicates that Chafee might have voted for Bolton if he had been re-elected (as I foresaw and noted in previous posts before the election).

Excerpt:

The White House had hoped Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), a moderate Republican who earlier raised questions about Bolton and the administration's policies in the Middle East, would support Bolton after the election. But Chafee lost his seat Tuesday.

"On Tuesday, the American people sent a clear message of dissatisfaction with the foreign policy approach of the Bush administration," Chafee said in a statement. "To confirm Mr. Bolton to the position of U.N. ambassador would fly in the face of the clear consensus of the country that a new direction is called for." Chafee said Bolton lacks the "collaborative approach" needed to make the United States "the strongest country in a peaceful world."

First Chafee gives the usual 'convenient excuse' that lawmakers dish out to explain their actions, but note that he explicitly cites Tuesday's vote. 


Interestingly JTA which bills itself as "The Global News Service of the Jewish People" thinks (as noted in article 'Bush resubmits Bolton') that the interim UN ambassador might have a chance at being confirmed in the next Senate because:

A number of Jewish Democrats in the Senate have since considered dropping their opposition because of Bolton’s outspoken defense of Israel and his tough stance on Iran.

I don't see that happening, but then what do I know?

tags: john bolton  lincoln chafee  un  ambassador  steve clemons  israel  

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