RI Democrat Candidate for Governor: Obama 'Can Take His Endorsement and Shove It'

Oh my. Barack Obama is campaigning today in deep blue Rhode Island, but isn't exactly feeling the love from the Democrat gubernatorial candidate.

This morning on WPRO Radio Providence, Democratic Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio, whom President Obama has not endorsed, lashed out.

“I never asked President Obama for his endorsement and what’s going on here is really Washington insider politics at its worst,” Caprio said. “He can take his endorsement and really shove it as far as I am concerned.”

Deferring to his friendship with former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican senator currently an independent gubernatorial candidate who endorsed the president in 2008, the president has not endorsed Caprio.

Recent polls indicate that Caprio and Chafee are in a tight race. According to the Providence Journal, Caprio was unaware that the president would not be endorsing him until a reporter told his campaign the news over the weekend.

Obama's simply coming to pick up some cash.

Caprio today charged that the president is “coming into Rhode Island treating us like an ATM machine. I will wear it as a badge of honor and a badge of courage that he doesn’t want to endorse me as a Democrat.“

It's worth noting that Obama and the idiot VP will spend all week campaigning in what were once Democrat strongholds but where incumbents and candidates for open seats are in danger. They don't dare show their faces in red states any more.

Oops: Chafee Campaign Failed to Pay Taxes

Just an honest misunderstanding or something. Stuff like this can be problematic leading up to an election.

Independent Rhode Island gubernatorial Lincoln Chafee's old Senate campaign committee failed to pay federal and state taxes for five years and owes an estimated $18,400 in taxes and penalties, a campaign aide told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Mike Trainor, deputy campaign manager for Chafee's gubernatorial campaign, said the Senate committee failed to pay taxes on approximately $64,400 of investment income from 2004 through 2008. The failure came to light after an inquiry by the AP.

Chafee in a written statement called it an honest misunderstanding. Trainor said it happened because two Chafee campaign treasurers did not understand Internal Revenue Service regulations for campaigns.

"I sincerely regret that the error was made," Chafee said. "I stand accountable and will take full and personal responsibility for paying all monies owed to the Internal Revenue Service and the Rhode Island Division of Taxation.

Trainor said the campaign planned to notify the IRS Friday. He said the IRS would determine how much interest was owed on the federal taxes and penalties, which amount to an estimated $15,900. The state tax owed was $2,500 for the period, or $500 per year, Trainor said.

Trainor said he was not aware of any tax problems with Chafee's gubernatorial campaign, but the campaign was checking following the AP's inquiry.

Chafee is a former Republican U.S. senator who lost re-election in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Trainor said most of the interest was earned in the period leading up to the 2006 Senate race, when Chafee had stockpiled millions of dollars in preparation for the campaign.

His main opponent in the governor's race, Democratic General Treasurer Frank Caprio, has paid both state and federal taxes since the 2005 tax year, according to filings his campaign made with the state Board of Elections. The campaigns of his other opponents, Republican John Robitaille and Moderate Ken Block, said their money is kept in interest-free accounts, and therefore they do not have to pay taxes.

Douchebag of the Week: Lincoln Chafee Dares to Question New England Icon

This is the clown who was a Republican while he saw it fit, and then abandoned the party for political expediency. Now he's taking on the guy who helped deliver the Red Sox the World Series in 2004, and questioning the infamous bloody sock, no less. Can you be any dumber?

Call it New England Politics 101. When you're running for office in Red Sox Nation, you don't take a Red Sox player's name in vain. Especially not the one who shed blood as he helped end that soul-crushing 86-year drought.

But that's exactly what independent gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee did in speaking about former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling in an interview on WPRO's The John DePetro show Tuesday.

"I just remember his own teammates didn't like him," Chafee said of Schilling. "They thought he was a bit of a salesman. I remember one of his teammates said he painted his sock, the bloody sock, that he painted it. Kevin Millar I think said that. I don't know if I trust Curt Schilling."

He was talking about the larger issue of Schilling's role in a controversial state economic development deal that will give Schilling's video game company, 38 Studios, a $75-million loan guarantee if he moves it to Rhode Island from Massachusetts. Chafee criticized the Schilling agreement for encumbering more than half of a new state loan guarantee program and risking it "on one company that's never had a penny of revenue yet."

But what many will remember is that Chafee criticized the guy who got the Sox a win when they needed it most: Game 6 of the 2004 playoff series against the Yankees. Not to mention he maligned the sock that has since been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Put it up there with failed Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, who famously referred to Schilling as a Yankee fan and poked fun at her opponent, Scott Brown, for standing outside Fenway Park shaking hands.

Diehard fans never forgave her. And Scott Brown is now Senator Brown.

The Chafee camp was quick to retract the talk radio comment, sending The Providence Journal this statement by late morning: "Senator Chafee regrets that what he intended as an off-hand reference to published reports about the bloody sock has deflected attention from the crux of this issue."

He went on to say: "Senator Chafee respects Curt Schilling's achievements as a professional athlete and his support of charitable causes. At the end of the day, however, his first concern is to protect the interest of Rhode Island taxpayers, on whose shoulders the burden of a 75 million dollar loan default would ultimately fall."

We here at PolitiFact don't typically check one-time shots from the hip, so we considered ignoring this flap. But by Tuesday afternoon, as the Chafee gaffe made national news and readers urged us to jump on it, we decided to take at look at the rumor that's been swirling for years.

It appears by all credible accounts that Chafee is, in fact, wrong.

The story begins with an ankle injury Schilling suffered in a playoff series against the Angels. Team doctors temporarily fixed a ruptured and dislocated tendon in his right ankle to keep it from moving, allowing him to pitch in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees.

Here's what The Providence Journal story about that October 2004 game said: "Schilling, who apparently was bleeding through his sock, was pitching through discomfort. TV cameras caught him wincing as he followed the flight of Miguel Cairo's two-out double to left-center in the third inning, the first Yankee hit of the game."

Ah yes, it's coming back now, chills and all. You know the ending. Schilling kept pitching, helping to vault the Sox past the Yankees to capture the American League title and then win the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Even this Yankee fan has the utmost respect for Schilling. To question his integrity--six years later--is just beyond stupid.

Lincoln Chafee: Palin a 'Cocky Wacko'

Please, folks, just keep it up. At the going rate Obama may be lucky to win one state.

Former Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee has called vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a "cocky wacko" and said her selection as John McCain's running mate has energized supporters of Democrat Barack Obama.

Chafee left the Republican Party last year after losing his bid for re-election and now supports Obama. He told an audience Tuesday at the New America Foundation in Washington that the Alaska governor has revived a "lackluster McCain candidacy."

"They've just thrown this firestorm, this tornado, into the whole presidential election," Chafee said in response to an audience member's question about whether the Obama campaign should worry about Palin's presence in the race.

He said her speech at the Republican National Convention had the unintended effect of energizing Democrats and Obama supporters.

"People were coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, e-mails were coming in, 'I just sent money to Obama, I couldn't sleep last night' — from the left. To see this cocky wacko up there," Chafee said to laughter.

So just like Tuesday when the audience yukked it up after Obama compared Palin to a pig, the audience laughed when Chafee insulted Palin. Going to be tough to play the victim when the inevitable backlash comes.

Seems there are a lot of people with trouble sleeping, or if they are, they're having bad dreams.

Thank goodness this asshole left the GOP. We have no use for such intolerant bigotry that clearly has a home with Democrats.

Barack Obama could admonish his supporters and ask they stop the personal attacks on Palin, but clearly he doesn't want them to stop.

H/T Hot Air. More from Michelle Malkin.

Shocka!: Chafee Leaves GOP

Wow, I just don't know if the party can soldier on after such a crucial defection.

Chafee quietly quits the GOP

Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party.

Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment.

“It’s not my party any more,” he said.

Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.

Chafee said he disaffiliated from the party “in June or July,” making him an unaffiliated voter. He did so quietly, and until yesterday, he said, “No one’s asked me about it.” He said he made the move because “I want my affiliation to accurately reflect my status.”

Nobody asked, frankly, because nobody cares. The notion he helped lead the party is absurd He was a RINO, plain and simple, and was not a reliable GOP vote.