  We investigate the stability and the nature of the chiral spin liquids which
were recently uncovered in extended Heisenberg models on the kagome lattice.
Using a Gutzwiller projected wave function approach -- i.e. a parton
construction -- we obtain large overlaps with ground states of these extended
Heisenberg models. We further suggest that the appearance of the chiral spin
liquid in the time-reversal invariant case is linked to a classical transition
line between two magnetically ordered phases.
