LINCOLN CHAFEE, easily the Senate's most liberal Republican, didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2004. Instead, he lodged a "symbolic protest" by casting a write-in ballot for former president George H.W. Bush. Chafee's beef with the younger Bush? Iraq ("a very, very costly quagmire"), tax cuts, the environment, gay marriage, abortion, the deficit--Rhode Island's junior senator opposed the president's "far-right-wing" policies on all of them.

Nevertheless, in his bid for reelection this year, Chafee has so far enjoyed the robust support of the White House, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Rhode Island state GOP, and leading Senate conservatives--despite the presence on the primary ballot of a right-of-center alternative, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey. Explains NRSC spokesman Dan Ronayne, "You're talking about probably the second most liberal state in the country." (Rhode Island was the most pro-Gore state in 2000, giving him 61 percent of the vote, and second only to Massachusetts in its support for Kerry in 2004, at 59 percent of the vote.) "We think Chafee is the only Republican who can keep the seat."

Lincoln Chafee is often "the only Republican," or one of very few. He was the only Senate Republican to vote against the Iraq war resolution, and one of three to oppose a ban on partial-birth abortion. He was one of two Senate Republicans to vote against both of President Bush's principal tax cuts, in May 2001 and May 2003 (the other was John McCain). Just last week, he was the only Republican

Chafee's "nay" on Alito piqued his conservative detractors. "The more I think about it, the more important it seems to me that Steve Laffey beat him," wrote National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. The Wall Street Journal played up the ethnic angle, noting that "Rhode Island has a higher proportion of Italian-Americans than any other state, and a vote against Judge Alito may not go over well, especially coming on the heels of Mr. Chafee's 'aye' vote for an equally conservative Chief Justice whose name ends in a consonant."

Chafee's challenger himself concurs. "My phone's been ringing off the hook," Laffey told me last Wednesday, with calls "from Italian Americans" angry over Chafee's vote against Alito. Laffey, who identifies himself as pro-life, blasts Chafee's "litmus test" approach to judicial nominees. "As long as they're qualified, they should be approved," he says. In a statement explaining his vote, Chafee wrote, "I am a pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-Bill of Rights Republican" and thus could not vote for Bush's appointee.

Chafee's pickle over Alito captures the broader bind he finds himself in: The positions that will help him in the general election--such as rejecting Bush's judicial nominees--will hurt him in the more conservative GOP primary. The primary is in September, which leaves plenty of time for Ocean State Republicans to either forget, or stew about, the Alito spat--and to compare Chafee with his plucky opponent.

Talk about an odd couple! The only thing Laffey and Chafee have in common is bulging bank accounts. But where Laffey is a former Wall Street whiz and self-made millionaire who never tires of discussing his up-by-the-bootstraps life story, Chafee comes from one of the "Five Families" that used to dominate Rhode Island politics. He is the son of the late governor-turned-senator John Chafee, and, to boot, he married into the Danforth family fortune. From there the contrasts only multiply. Laffey is a populist, Chafee a patrician. Laffey is garrulous, Chafee reserved. Laffey is blustery, Chafee soft-spoken. Laffey is a boat-rocker, Chafee a boat-steadier. While Laffey claims the support of "Reagan Democrats," Chafee is a throwback to the Rockefeller Republicans against whom Reagan rebelled.