Republicans have become an endangered species in Rhode Island. It’s not that the GOP has ever been the dominant party in the state, or even close to it, but until 2007, there was at one least one Republican in the four-member congressional delegation for the last three decades, and three of the last five Governors have been Republicans.
The 2006 election took its toll on Ocean State Republicans. The GOP now holds only one of the five constitutional statewide offices (the governorship), the congressional delegation is entirely Democratic after GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s defeat, and the party only has a handful of seats in the state legislature. Only five of the 38 members of the state Senate are Republicans and they hold just 13 seats in the 75-member state House.
It is not a stretch to say that the prospects of Republicans ever finding a top-tier candidate with the potential to defeat popular two-term Democratic Sen. Jack Reed were always somewhere between slim and none. To exacerbate the situation, the Governor decided that the state GOP’s focus in 2008 would
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