Miss McConnell In Trouble Back Home

This week, Kentucky grassroots SuperPAC, Progress Kentucky launched a recruitment drive to draft challengers for Miss McConnell. "McConnell, the most unpopular Senator in the country," said Progress Kentucky Executive Director Shawn Reilly, "must be challenged by someone that can bring about a brighter future for our state and someone who prioritizes good government and the needs of our state of their own ambitions. It’s unacceptable that someone as unpopular as McConnell would be unopposed for a sixth term.” Polls show that McConnell is probably vulnerable on two levels-- from a Tea Party type Republican in the primary and in November from a mainstream Democrat. Progress Kentucky worries that "only a handful of candidates have so far expressed interest in running against a five-term incumbent with $7 million in his campaign war chest and a history of nasty, scorched-earth campaigning.

Progress Kentucky today is launching a campaign designed to provide potential challengers with an early indication of how much support they might have among Kentuckians. The organization has launched over twenty petitions to “draft” possible challengers ranging from liberals like Ashley Judd to Tea Party conservatives like Phil Moffett, and all points in between.

Each petition asks signers to endorse the statement “We strongly urge ________________ to challenge Mitch McConnell for Kentucky's US Senate seat in 2014.”

Progress Kentucky will launch new petitions to gauge support as candidates float trial balloons or as intriguing potential candidates surface in the media. The initial batch of draft petitions include:

• Ashley Judd, the popular actress and University of Kentucky basketball fan who would run as a Democrat
• John Yarmuth, Democratic representative of the 3rd Congressional district in Louisville
• Phil Moffett, businessman and self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate who ran for Governor in 2011
• Thomas Massie, the Tea Party representative of Kentucky's 4th Congressional district in northern Kentucky.
• Larry Hausman, one of the founders of the Louisville Tea Party and a Congressional candidate in 2010.
• Dea Riley, an Independent who ran for Lieutenant Governor with the late Gatewood Galbraith in 2011.

And while Progress Kentucky is a mainstream group, there are also fringe organizations taking aim at Miss McConnell as well, including Brent Bozell's neo-fascist ForAmerica. He's already launched an anti-Miss McConnell ad, "Whose Side Are You On?" They spent around $10,000 and the ad (above) will run on Facebook, the Daily Caller and Drudge. It asks rightists to sign a petition letting Republican lawmakers know they will be held accountable if they vote for legislation to further increase taxes.

“As negotiations over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ were intensifying, conservatives called on McConnell and congressional Republicans to hold the line on tax rates and demand cuts to spending, as they had promised,” the petition states. “But when the deadline was looming, McConnell called Vice President Joe Biden and signed off on a deal with the White House that included tax increases and virtually no spending cuts.”

Bozell himself is a deranged extremist, energized by hatred and greed who insists that the GOP drive the economy over the cliff. He thrives on the idea of pain for ordinary American families. “When Republicans agree to do what they did agree to do," hissed Bozell, "then they are just as much tax-and-spend Democrats as Democrats are. Do I have any confidence that Republicans will stand by [McConnell’s] statements a couple of days ago that the talk about tax increases are over? None. It is a fluid situation. There are some serious battles coming up. I’m not writing off anything. If Republicans find their mojo and rediscovered their soul and try to do the right thing, we’ll support them, but they just can’t count on us anymore.”

Wingnuts like Bozell blame McConnell for working out a compromise with Biden and are trying to pressure him as a mortally-wounded Boehner slips into the background and Miss becomes the key negotiator for the next part of the so-called "Fiscal Cliff" charade.