NP: TV On The Radio, Return To Cookie Mountain

One of several points John Dickerson tries to make in Slate today is that the attitude of the GOP toward Lincoln Chaffee's primary battle is diametrically opposed to that of the Democrats and Joe Lieberman.

The Republican Party also got the win it wanted by tossing aside ideology. When Democrats were faced with a similar battle in Connecticut between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman, the party establishment dithered for fear of offending their grass-roots activists. Their Republican counterparts didn't have such misgivings. Once Washington Republican leaders decided that Laffey could not win in the general election against the Democratic candidate, they threw their support behind Chafee.

Unfortunately, the two situations are just different enough to make this comparison almost look like it would work. It doesn't. Note that the GOP held its nose and threw its support behind Chaffee specifically because the more extreme challenger would almost surely lose the Senate seat to the Dems. There's no such risk in Connecticut, unless you count losing a Democrat's seat to a lifelong Democrat. If there was a serious GOP challenger that faced the winner of Lamont vs. Lieberman, then the dynamic would have been much, much different, because if there's one thing the netroots movement likes less than centrists, it's losing seats in Congress.

While there are certainly scenarios -- Lieberman tagged to replace Rumsfeld, allowing a Republican governor to designate his replacement in the Senate -- where backing the "more partisan" candidate might result in losing the seat to the other side, the likeliest result was always Lamont vs. Lieberman Round Two, and there's still a decent chance Lamont wins again anyway.

Of course, this won't stop anyone from trying to portray the GOP as taking the high road while the Dems turn on their own, because it's easier to leave the details up to the public, who generally have neither the time nor the inclination to fact-check.