The time is here. The time is now. Just go. Go. GO! Mitch McConnell doesn’t care how.
For several days now, there has been a drip-drip of (probably well-orchestrated) leaks about how GOP powers, starting at the top with McConnell and NRSC chair John Cornyn, want Jim Bunning to get out of the way to let them run a more vigorous, coherent candidate in the 2010 Kentucky Senate race. This reached a head with Bunning’s unexplained absence last week and then Cornyn’s recent comments, when asked if Bunning or someone else would be the best candidate to run: “I don’t know. I think it’s really up to Senator Bunning.”
Today Bunning fought back against leadership’s “I don’t know” act, in a conference call with Kentucky media. Roll Call reports:
“I had an hourlong meeting with Sen. McConnell in the first week of December in 2008, and we thoroughly discussed my candidacy for the Senate in that hour meeting in my office in Northern Kentucky – and gave him every indication that I was going to run again,” Bunning told reporters on a conference call Tuesday, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. “So he either had a lapse of memory or something when speaking to the Press Club last week when he said that he didn’t know what my intentions were. He knew very well what my intentions were.”
With Bunning only sitting on $175,000 right now, and now seemingly entering into a war of words with the guys charged with saving his butt next year, this race is starting to look pretty promising (as long as Bunning stays in).
Can anyone else smell a primary challenge? Maybe the GOP leadership will actively support someone else in the primary to take McConnell out. Is there even a precedent for that at the U.S. Senate level? Even if they got a strong nominee, that might divide the party…
This seat is going to be hard to defend if he doesn’t choose to retire, whether he’s the nominee or not.
This is great stuff to watch. Long (up to 20 months) may it run.
Jim Bunning was a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher but the end of his career was pretty nasty. After opening up with a 3 win 5 loss season, Bunning had a winning record for 12 straight seasons. Then age set in. Jim Bunning had a losing record for three of his last four seasons. In his last year, Bunning was very old (39, fifth oldest player in the NL) and very bad (5-12, 5.48 ERA with the NL average ERA being 3.46).
Don’t expect him to leave on his own. This is good news for us. He’ll take a lot of kicking and dragging and still show up for another loss when November 2010 rolls in.
Does anyone know if his committee membership has been cut by the party? From what I understand he has missed a ton of meetings lately and that may be one way to push him out.
Maybe we’ll get really lucky and he says screw the party and runs as an independent.
and ActBlue, or other fundraisers for Democrats can start up a secret fund for Jim Bunning to withstand a primary challenge, or at least increase his financial coffers just enough to give him an appearance that he has the resources to run again. I really hate to see him go, not just because it increases the chances he’ll lose, but I really want to see how this guy campaigns this time around now that he’s older and his seeming dementia perhaps more prominent.
McConnell and co. couldn’t get Larry “wide stance” Craig to do their bidding and resign early.
So here’s hoping they meet with a similar lack of success in getting Bunning to do what they want and resign.
So far so good.