Gordon Smith (R, OR-Sen) is advertising as being in line with Obama in Oregon.  Lincoln Chafee (who lost his Republican RI Senate seat in the 2006 midterm) has left his party.  Today he published a short piece on TPM today which got me thinking of 1980.

Democrats in Congress developed their "Stockholm Syndrome" after Reagan swept to power, caving to him on issue after issue.  It was infuriating.  Chafee's got me thinking that maybe that pendulum is swinging the other way.  President Obama's gonna get bipartisan votes passed in Congress.  The Republicans are going to get thrashed with Obama's coattails.  Mitch McConnell's not going to get iron-fisted discipline out of his caucus any more.  Even if he's still got 42 or 43, I'm thinking filibusters are going to decline dramatically.

I think we've got signs of some really good news here.

Within the past month I put forth 19 polls with 15 candidates each to figure out who you guys want in an Obama cabinet. With voting in all rounds now over I compiled five different cabinets and will put them all up for a vote this week.

Who got included in the final cabinets: the top three in each poll automatically made it into these final cabinet polls, in some cases also the 4th and 5th. However, to make sure that the cabinets are as diverse as possible I gave some candidates who didn't have enough votes a wildcard.

Each day this week you can rate a cabinet. Today, you can rate a possible Obama/Richardson cabinet on a scale from 1 (hate it) to 10 (love it). At the end I will post the results and the cabinet with the highest average wins.

Within the past month I put forth 19 polls with 15 candidates each to figure out who you guys want in an Obama cabinet. With voting in all rounds now over I compiled five different cabinets and will put them all up for a vote this week.

Who got included in the final cabinets: the top three in each poll automatically made it into these final cabinet polls, in some cases also the 4th and 5th. However, to make sure that the cabinets are as diverse as possible I gave some candidates who didn't have enough votes a wildcard.

Each day this week you can rate a cabinet. Today, you can rate a possible Obama/Richardson cabinet on a scale from 1 (hate it) to 10 (love it). At the end I will post the results and the cabinet with the highest average wins.

Everyone's talking about Obama's running mate. But who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Today you can vote on the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also, the previous rounds are still open for voting. More below the fold.

For all of you have been following these polls, I just wanted to let you know why there's no runoff for Sec. of Health and Human Services today. The problem is that thus far all polls were won by white men. It is as unrealistic as can be that we'd actually have a cabinet in which all the top positions were held by white men. It's not the 60s anymore. So the Obama Cabinet polls will have to change a little.

What I will do from now on:

I will still poll all positions and the initial polls for all positions are reopened. So you can still vote for State, AG, etc. In the end, I will look at all poll results and will compile five different cabinets including your favorite candidates from each poll (plus a wildcard where necessary). The diversity of the US population will be reflected in each cabinet. And you then get to vote on each cabinet as a whole.

Today's poll and the links to the other polls are below the fold.

I realise that, having just written a diary criticising Jim Webb for being too conservative, it may be odd to recommend a Republican for the vice presidential spot.

But there's been a lot of buzz about picking a 'moderate' Republican to sit on the ticket, to counterbalance Obama -- Bloomberg, Hagel, Lugar, or William Cohen. But if you were to pick a Republican, then I don't see how you could go past Lincoln Chafee.

Politicians are all the same, except the ones that aren't like the rest. Former Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) comes from a long line of politicians; in this small state, he is certainly among the "elite," to use a topical term. But unlike most life-long politicians, this man is unfailingly honest.

Is he perfect? No. He was a Republican for most of his life and cast votes that many of us would disagree with. But he also supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, funding for stem cell research, voted against the tax cuts, and was the only Republican senator to vote against the resolution to use force in Iraq. Most importantly, in Lincoln Chafee's political life, he's done what he felt was right regardless of political considerations or pressure from within the party.

He's written a wonderful book that I would recommend to all Kossacks: "Against the Tide: How a Complaint Congress Empowered a Reckless President."

I was reading the Brown Alumni Magazine yesterday when I came across a good article by Republican Representative Lincoln Chafee about how the political maneuvering to cut Congress out of the loop of government started even before 9/11.

Many had been there in 1990 when the president's father, President George H. W. Bush, agreed to raise taxes to shrink the deficit, a big factor in his loss two years later. With presidential leadership exercised and political pain already endured, why would we suddenly want to turn the treasury upside down and shake out every last dime.

To me, the tax cut was a stalking horse. The Cheney-Bush strategy behind the cut was to set the tone—to preempt the Congress not just on taxes but on every issue. It would tame any future resistance to a radical agenda by serving up this politically irresistible prize: lawmakers could go home and say they had voted to cut taxes. The White House was out to neuter Congress, and the minute Congress rolled over for the cuts, it set the stage for one-branch rule in America and all the consequences we live with today.

This is the quote that says so much more than you initially realize.  According to Lincoln Chafee, this is what Dick Cheney said back in December of 2000.

The campaign was over and that our actions in office would not be dictated by what had to be said in the campaign,"

This quote demonstrates several of DFQ's premises all in one.

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the lone Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war, calls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton one of the "Democratic Bush enablers" who failed to stand up to the president.

In a new book, Chafee, who is backing Clinton rival Sen. Barack Obama, skewers Clinton and other Democratic White House hopefuls who said they were duped by Bush into voting for the war.

"Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill," Chafee writes. "They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment, in my view."

http://news.aol.com/...

Yesterday's wildcard round featured 15 candidates and since no one came even close to 50% of the vote the top five candidates will square off in a 1st run-off today. If no one gets to 50% today, there will be second run-off between the top two tomorrow. As to what this is all about and who won the first 15 matchups, please check out yesterday's diary.

After the initial 15 matchups, the first round of the Obama Veepstakes poll concludes with a wilcard round of less likely choices (in my very subjective opinion). They include people seldomly talked about yet associated with the Obama campaign, they also include members of the House of Representatives, and also Republicans and Independents and a few others. While putting the wildcard round together I tried to include your suggestions from previous comment threads.

Unless one of the 15 candidates manages to get more than 50%, I will conduct a first run-off tomorrow between those in the double digits or the top five, and if necessary hold a second run-off on Tuesday.

Continuing on from my last post about a suggested Obama/Schweitzer ticket I have my 2nd 'unconventional' suggestion, Obama/Chafee.

First of all to give a quick background for those unfamiliar with Lincoln Chafee--he was the Republican Senator from Rhode Island who lost to Sheldon Whitehouse in November 2006 despite having good job approval (in other words he lost because he had an R next to his name (which I agree was enough of a reason to boot him then).  He quietly re-registered as an Independent since then.

Reasons for this proposal are below the cut:

Hillary Clinton ‘s vote to enable George Bush to go to war in Iraq has gotten lots of attentions, but her explanations after the fact create a major credibility problem for her.  We’ve heard a lot about vote authorizing war, but her explanations of a now-forgotten alternative to war are just as troubling.

So, I know some people see this as planning too far ahead in the future. The fate of Texas and Ohio is in question. Some think she'll fight this till the convention and hope to persuade superdelegates to win the nomination. How about we forget this for 5 minutes and assume he's the nominee. His Vice President should be the former Republican Senator from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee!

Now hear me out for a second. I know the initial reaction is probably negative, because he's a, well, Republican. But if you look at the record, he's a better Democrat than most Democrats.

He was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. (sorry Clinton-Edwards)
He's pro-choice, pro gay-rights, and pro-environment.
He opposed the Bush tax cuts and wanted to increase taxes on the upper income bracket.

This would be a fitting choice for Chafee because you could say he's a "unity" candidate, but in actuality, he is very liberal.

I don't think I've seen anything like this.

Mark MacKinnon, who designs Mr McCain's advertisements, said he could not face being part of a campaign that "would inevitably be attacking" Mr Obama.

"I have met Barack Obama. I have read his book. I like him a great deal. I disagree with him on very fundamental issues but it would be uncomfortable for me and it would be bad for the McCain campaign," he told National Public Radio.

Sorry about the short nature of this diary - I would like to comment further on the larger political ramifications of this endorsement right now, but I just wanted to get this up as quickly as possible. I can't believe no one has posted this yet.......

Lincoln Chafee announced today that he is endorsing Barack Obama for President.

Former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee is endorsing Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

The Rhode Islander told The Associated Press he is endorsing Obama in a conference call Thursday. Chafee left the Republican Party last year and became an independent.