The National Republican Senatorial Committee has hit the panic button over the possibility that conservative challenger Steve Laffey may knock off moderate incumbent Lincoln Chafee. It's already known that the NRSC is running ads to protect Chafee, who has a much better chance of keeping the seat in GOP hands than Laffey does. Now Election Central has reiewed some new data just filed with the Federal Election Commission. Guess how much the NRSC has spent on direct mail this year targeting Laffey? A grand total of...$181,587.66.

What's particularly interesting about this is the stark contrast between this race and the Connecticut contest. The DSCC didn't try in any meaningful way at all to protect incumbent Joe Lieberman from challenger Ned Lamont. DSCC chief Chuck Schumer endorsed Lieberman, but DSCC aides let it be known that the DSCC would respect the wishes of Connecticut Dem primary voters and back the contest's winner, and the DSCC says it spent no money in the Connecticut primary.

The NRSC, by contrast, has been very aggressively trying to influence the outcome of a race that ideally should be decided by primary voters -- in effect spending lots of resources in a primary that the NRSC would much rather be spending on races against Dems.