Following up on my previous post, another comment from The Hill’s Aaron Blake caught my eye:
After former GOP governors passed on campaigns in Wisconsin and New York recently, Rossi is the last big prize on the GOP map.
That’s the GOP’s last big prize? A two-time gubernatorial loser, who just a year and half ago lost a 53-47 race to a governor whose approval rating currently stands at 35 percent? Could the GOP bench be any shallower?
And what does all this courtship of Rossi have to say about the other Republicans already in the race? Assuming Rossi doesn’t run (and that’s long been my assumption), how difficult will it be for party leadership to feign enthusiasm for, say, Don Benton or Clint Didier?
And speaking of party leadership, I can’t help but wonder about Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser’s role in all this. Multiple sources confirm that Esser has encouraged Rossi to run against Sen. Patty Murray, and the fundraising numbers make it clear that he’s withheld state party support from the other candidates. Yet even as Rossi’s dithering makes a Republican victory less likely with each passing day, Esser refuses to swing party support behind a candidate who actually wants the nomination.
Why? Well, Esser is a Rob McKenna protege, and the last thing he and his boss want is a gubernatorial primary battle against Rossi in 2012… a bump in the road that would surely be avoided should Rossi run for senate, win or lose.
Forget Rossi v. Murray. Rossi v. McKenna is what these machinations are really about.
Um… No.
I don’t think it’s going to be Rossi v. McKenna. Rossi’s done, but there’s no one else to talk about, so the talk is about Rossi. Rossi ran his first race in ’92 and in that time he has lost 3, won 1, and didn’t finish his one term as a state senator.
Dead on… exactly what I was trying to say in the last thread.
McKenna has building his resume for the Governor’s Mansion since the beginning of his career. Not the the most charismatic of individuals, he had to do it working the trenches. He’s been putting in the time in various political offices and is now on the threshold of jumping to the Governor’s mansion from the AG’s office.
Rossi has ran two failed campaigns. A person with a lot of charisma, Rossi has been able to squeak by with no practical experience. In most political circles he would be toast and his political party would say enough already, let’s try someone else.
So now you’ve got the two of them on a collision course. The guy who’s worked hard to get as far as he has and the guy that charms his way to the front of the line.
This is why, for all the discontent with politicians of both parties, the Democrats will still control congress in the fall, even the senatate.
My prediction is that after the fall election we’ll have a filibuster proof majority again.
Add N.H. seat and FL seat to the Dems. Give N.D. to R’s.
The rest will balance out the seats to 60/40.
@3
Not a chance GBS. Reid, here in NV, is toast. Stick a fork in him, because he is done. The Dems may indeed retain majorities in both houses, but I think they’ll be smaller than you think. So will the Reps numbers, btw. My bet is that more third party candidates get elected this fall than ever before. Maybe (hopefully) even enough to have some real say in how badly the big boys fuck up the country going forward.
@4…one can only hope.
The D’s and R’s have done fucked us good for the last few decades…
GBS, I wouldn’t have thought that awhile back, but the Republicans can’t seem to pull anything together or present any valid leadership. They could go the route of Scott Brown, but then they would have to accept more pro-choice, moderate Republicans.
Traditionally the party that holds the WT loses seats in the midterms. It’s been that way for decades.
As far as a third party goes, it just too difficult to sustain in a two party system. You will have an independent here and there but a full third party just won’t make it with our political system.
This is exactly why, perhaps the only reason why, the Dems will hold the 60/40 marign. It’s called the “Perot effect.”
In FL you’ll have Christ as an Independent taking votes from Rubio. That’s splitting the conservative vote. Dems get FL.
N.H. ain’t votin’ in another R to replace Gregg.
Reid may lose, but we’ll get Kit Bond’s seat in the Big MO.
Like I said, we’ll net enough seats to get a filibuster proof majority again.
Thanks mostly to the pure idealogists in the Republican Party who bow down to Limbaugh and created the Teahadist movement.
For a Democrat Goldy…you worry and dither a lot about the other party. Two posts in one day about Rossi?
While I could go for the cheap laugh and hint that you might be a closeted Republican fearing that step out….I wonder more if you just have a crush on are sweet on Dino.
????
@8…thats by plan matty.
Goldy has nothing to say about the democrats because there is nothing good coming from that side – ergo goldy takes the cheap-n-easy way out with numerous, pointless blathers about dino or the times…yawn..
but hey, he is a “journalist”, and HA is the future of “journalism”….lol
Matty @8,
I’m offering insight into the Rossi speculation that you won’t find elsewhere. If you’re not interested, don’t read it.
We might see a few independents in the house and senate, but I doubt there will be much 3rd party action. The Tea Baggers are too f’ing insane to win a general election and if there’s a 3rd party movement on the left, I’ve missed it.
The idea of a coalition government doesn’t really appeal to me.
If Reid goes down in NV, he’ll be replaced with a nobody, with no power. It might be a bit of a windfall for those of us in WA, but it will just be a fall for the folks in NV.
I think that’s why Reid keeps squeaking out wins down there in NV. As flawed as he is he is still a powerful senator. A good number of people understand that, even if they don’t like it.
People outside of NV have to be careful as well. No one likes it when you come into their state and tell them how to vote.
@11
Regarding Reid, I can certainly understand how from a political standpoint, his rejection might be seen as a negative. What about from a “best for the whole country” point of view? I haven’t lived here that long, but damnit Yucca Mountain is a 10 or 15 billion dollar hole in the ground. WTF? That’s bullshit and Reid is directly responsible for it. If the voters of NV toss Reid out, then I applaud them. In the military, or corporate world, often times, the rule seems to be “fuck up, move up”. In public service however, it damn well ought to cost you your job.
Veering way off topic there, for which I apologize….
@13
It’s a case of being careful of what you wish for. You’d have to vote someone in that both wants to stop Yucca Mountain and has the power to stop it. What you might wind up with is someone with no power and 98 senators from other states that think that sending nuclear waste to some state other than their own is a fine idea.
It looks like Obama’s taken Yucca Mountain off the table.
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/
You can add the non-profit sector to that list.
I’m still wondering how much the GOP is relying upon polling which depends upon some rather outdated sampling methods.
Most polling is done by phone, for economy and random sampling reasons. It is based on the assumption that most households have one telephone, so a random sample can be created by making sure you have the right mix of “exchanges” included in your calling list.
But polsters can’t call cell phones – they are prohibited from doing so, because the receiver then has to pay for the call in terms of used minutes. So a person who has no home phone and uses a cell phone instead will never get a polling call, except by accident.
So who has only cell phones, and no land line? By overwhelming margins, it is young people (under 30). And at least in the last two elections, they voted for Democrats in large numbers.
So the key to a Democratic victory is to go to work now to make sure these same young voters turn out for the 2010 elections. It’s always a problem, young people tend to be idiolistic but easily distracted, and they have a lot going on in their lives to compete with election activity. Then you also have the ballot/precinct issue – since they tend to move often, they often forget to keep their voter registration address updated, and may never receive a vote-by-mail ballot.
But news about Republicans having a chance to recover any portion of Congress in 2010 might bring them back out in droves. The Republican crowing about polls moving in their favor might actually be working against them – the polls might give the Republicans a false sense of security, and at the same time fire up the Democratic opposition.
13:
So when did you move there, and where to? Having been the ex-pat correspondent from the Silver State until recently (got back from exile on Virginia Street three months ago, but working in Carson City in a few weeks), I think it’d be cool to keep an ear open on things down there.
I hope that the Repubs run Clint Didier.
Clit Diddler is just too perfect.
@16
Been down here a couple of months now. Got a job, in my field no less, in Las Vegas, of all places. Definitely wasn’t anything happening on the employment front up there, so when I got the chance to come down here, I jumped on it.
Right on. Dealt with the sticker shock on your utility bills yet? The missus & I probably paid almost double for utilities in Reno thatn we did in either Olympia or Port Angeles. Here’s some advice – if you’re in a house, consider getting solar panels stat.
@19
Yeah, I got an inkling of that with my first electricity bill. On the plus side however, the traffic congestion is far less, drivers actually drive the freaking speed limit (okay, way more than the speed limit), and the cops don’t care about that for the most part.
Like anyplace I suppose – good and bad….
I’d agree with you that traffic in Vegas would be better than in Seattle. I know the Reno area better than I do Vegas, but I’ve got some good impressions of the area. The area itself is better suited to laying out freeways for better traffic flow (eventually 215 will become a full-on loop freeway, rather than the mutant semi-limited access ring road it is now – NDOT adores ring roads, there’s lots of them in Reno and Carson City), and there aren’t any really bad chokepoints on their grid, like say, I-5 at Seneca. And the bus system is good enough, so that I’ve never heard much talk of anything replacing them.
Just hope you’re ready for the heat.
Oh, one last thing, something you’ll think would never happen to you – you’ll miss the rain like we have in the Northwest. There’s only two types of rain in Nevada, the very light sprinkle that annoys the shit out of you because you expect more and it never comes, and flat-out thunderstorms that can cause flash flooding. That’s why there’s a massive system of storm drains in the LV area, so large that there’s actually people living in them!