There's class and then there's crass -- I wish Georgia was in the former with Rhode Island.

Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island has decided to not vote for President Bush in November.

One day after the Supreme Court sealed the 2000 election for George W., Bush, his running mate, Dick Cheney, went to the Capitol for a private lunch with five moderate Republican senators. The agenda he laid out that day in December 2000 stunned Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, sending Mr. Chafee on a painful journey of political conscience that, he said in an interview last week, has culminated with his decision not to vote for Mr. Bush in November.

"I literally was close to falling off my chair," Mr. Chafee said, recounting the vice president's proposals for steep tax cuts, missile defense programs and abandoning the Kyoto environmental accords. "It was no room for discussion. I said, 'Well, you're going to need us; it's a 50-50 Senate, you're going to need us moderates.' He said, 'Well, we need everybody.' ''

"I'll vote Republican," he said, explaining that he would choose a write-in candidate, perhaps George Bush the elder, as a symbolic act of protest. Asked if he wanted Senator John Kerry to be president, Mr. Chafee shook his head sadly, as if to say he could not entertain the question. "I've been disloyal enough," he said.

Source: a N.Y. Times article entitled "In the Senate, Raising a (Quiet) Republican Voice Against the Administration," an article reviewing how one U.S. Senator has handled disagreement within his party, a scenario about which Georgians can only wish were our case.