Republicans Stumble Trying To Put Best Foot Forward For Senate 2010

If history repeating itself means the 2010 midterms will resemble the 1934 midterms-- and there are ample reasons to believe they will, as Obama struggles FDR-like to save the country from Republican excesses that brought on economic catastrophe while the GOP redefined itself in the minds of voters as the Grand Obstructionist Party-- then Congress will look very different in 2011. Republicans lost 14 more House seats, giving them a total of 103. But the Senate is where they were really devastated, losing 10 seats and leaving them with a total of 25 seats, an ineffectual and irrelevant rump of a party. One Republican, Robert LaFollette (WI) left the GOP and joined the Progressive Party, while an open seat in Maryland went to a Democrat and Republican incumbents in Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri (Harry Truman won), New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia were defeated.

Republicans try putting on a brave face but they are well aware that playing the obstructionist game against a well-liked president-- and betting against the country-- is very dangerous. The anti-Republican trend in congressional races of the past two cycles could easily pick up steam and leave their Senate caucus in the same state it was in after the '34 election: utterly inconsequential.

By publicly threatening to encourage a primary against mainstream moderate Arlen Specter, RNC Chairman Michael Steele has encouraged a primary. Far right extremist loon Pat Toomey, who had settled on a run for governor, has decided to jump into the race against Arlen Specter instead. Toomey is far too right-wing to win a statewide general election in moderate Pennsylvania but he is likely to beat Specter in the closed Republican primary. Hundreds of thousands of moderate Republicans have left the GOP in disgust-- and re-registered as Independents or Democrats-- and would vote for Specter in a general election but now can't vote for him in the primary. Polling shows that Specter is likely to lose. That's one red seat that will probably turn blue.

Republicans are so nervous about the erratic, and some say increasingly senile, Senator from Kentucky, Jim Bunning, that several party leaders, particularly Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, are actually trying to prevent him for standing for re-election.

Republicans are trying to rid themselves of Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, the former baseball star who clearly has little use for some colleagues and party leaders, and who keeps exhibiting what one senator calls “behavior issues.”

Key Republicans are gently (or not gently enough) trying to dissuade Mr. Bunning from seeking re-election in 2010 out of concern that his paltry fundraising, declining approval ratings and irascible conduct have made him something between vulnerable and unelectable.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Bunning has shown no sign of stepping aside and delivered a string of incendiary pronouncements that have fed an impression that he is, to go with a baseball metaphor, a bit of a screwball.

Last week Bunning told a group of K Street lobbyists that if McConnell and Cornyn, both of whom he loathes, continue to sabotage his fundraising efforts, he will retire now and allow Democratic Governor Steve Beshear, to replace him-- giving the Democrats a 60th vote, the crucial filibuster-proof majority.

Meanwhile polling in Louisiana shows that David Diapers Vitter is likely to lose his seat, either in a Republican primary or in the general election. Democrats have a good shot at picking up 4 seats of retiring Republicans in Florida, New Hampshire, Missouri and Ohio and other vulnerable Republicans include obstructionists Richard Burr (NC), Chuck Grassley (IA) and Johnny Isakson (GA).