THE SUNUNU TWO STEP-- DANCING HIMSELF INTO POLITICAL EXTINCTION

If I had to guess on just one Republican most likely to be out looking for a job on K. Street after next year's election it would be John Sununu, the always-agonized reactionary rubber stamp from New Hampshire. (This isn't to say that Norm Coleman, Pete Domenici or Gordon Smith have much chance of hanging on; I just think that-- aside from the open Republican seat in Colorado-- Sununu is the most vulnerable.)

The most obvious reason can be seen by even the most cursory examination of 2006's election results. Outspoken, grassroots progressives, Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, convincingly ousted the 2 entrenched Republican congressmen (New Hampshire only has two) while the Democratic governor, John Lynch was re-elected in a landslide (72%) and both houses of the state legislature went Democratic. Meanwhile the folks in the Granite State have been reminded every few months-- as another Republican operative is charged, indicted, found guilty and sentenced to prison for helping Rove and Mehlman steal their state's senate race for Sununu in 2002-- what their state's GOP has degenerated into. All this on top of a presidential election year that looks very grim for Republicans, as Fox News is reporting today.

Last year 298,000 NH voters cast their ballots for Lynch, while only 105,000 voted for the Republican. 209,000 voted for Shea-Porter and Hodes while only 188,000 voted for the GOP incumbents (Bradley and Bass). After a narrow NH victory in 2000, Bush lost the state in 2004, Kerry getting 340,000 votes and Bush getting 331,000. In fact, New Hampshire was the only state Bush won in 2000 that he lost as an incumbent. Those trends are all bad news for Sununu who managed to beat Jeanne Shaheen in 2002 only with the help of the massive voter fraud, since proven in several court cases.

On top of that, Sununu now has a voting record that is at variance with his constituents on almost all matters of importance. For all his recent hand-wringing on Iraq, he has been a down-the-line Bush rubber stamp from Day One, voting blindly with the Bush Regime on every one of the 23 Senate roll calls relating to Iraq with one inconsequential exception (and a whole bunch of important votes he managed to miss rather than go on the record for or against). This week he refused to join Republicans Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith in voting for the legislation the Senate passed that would start the process to get us out of Iraq.

Even leaving Iraq out for a moment, Sununu votes more like some hard right lunatic from Texas or Alabama than like a northeast moderate. His overall voting record is radically right and absolutely abysmal-- unless you too, like Sununu, hate public education, fair taxation, the environment, a woman's right to choice, health care, civil rights, fair justice, and workers' rights.

Is it any wonder that the Rove slide show that was exposed at the GSA hearings yesterday show that the GOP is massively concerned that they will lose Sununu's seat next year? Rove's team was illegally urging the GSA to use its resources to help Sununu remain in the Senate, a clear violation of the Hatch Act.

Most Democrats are dying for Jeanne Shaheen to challenge him next year. She would probably kick his ass from Maine to Vermont, Quebec to Massachusetts. In fact a Republican polling outfit, ARG released polling data today that shows Shaheen is leading Sununu by a wide margin in a hypothetical re-match next year: 44-34%. She hasn't decided whether or not to run.

Yesterday's Boston Globe had a piece on ex-astronaut Jay Buckey who just launched an exploratory committee that could lead to a campaign for the seat. Buckey is currently a professor of medicine at Dartmouth.


UPDATE: NH DOESN'T WANT RUBBER STAMPERS REPRESENTING THEM IN THE U.S. SENATE

And if the pressure on Sununu wasn't bad enough, the New Hampshire legislature is urging him to stop rubber stamping Bush's failed policies and to help end the war. Yesterday the N.H. House voted 214-151 to pass HR 10, the last thing in the world Sununu wanted to see coming out of his state.


UPDATE: SUNUNU TO BUSH-- "PLEASE STAY OUT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE... AND OUR WHOLE MEDIA MARKET"

Desperately fighting to retain his seat-- even though no Democrat has declared yet-- Sununu answered the North Andover Eagle-Tribune editorial board's question about whether or not he wants Bush to campaign for him in an uncharacteristically straightforward fashion: "Not if he's not going to be effective."