Missouri Republican Sarah Steelman on Roy Blunt:
“Roy Blunt is another white guy in a suit, and I think the public wants change”.
With that in mind, we give you this cool new baseball card featuring the all-star players in the Missouri Republican establishment…or as we like to call them, the starting lineup of “The Missouri Suits”. We start by highlighting the “illustrious” career of the Suits’ brightest current star, Congressman and would-be Senator Roy Blunt!
Roy Blunt, of course, is seeking the Senate spot of the Suits’ elder statesman, Sen. Kit Bond. He enjoys the endorsements not only of Bond, but of former Suits ace John Ashcroft and auxiliary man Jim Talent, both of whom served in the Senate prior to being run out of town by a disgruntled fanbase/electorate.
Roll on over to the Suits’ webpage, and get your own Roy Blunt baseball card today! Get them while they’re hot!
The Minnesota Supreme Court has unanimously declared Al Franken, nominee of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as the winner of the November 2008 U.S. Senate election.
After over $1 million spent in legal fees by Norm Coleman and the Republican Party, and after fully eight months of stalling, the jig finally appears to be up.
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the DSCC, issued the following statement:
“Congratulations to Senator-elect Franken for today’s courtroom victory affirming his electoral victory. As we’ve seen over the past 238 days, no matter how many times Norm Coleman goes to court, the result of the election never changes: Al Franken earned more votes than Norm Coleman. Al Franken was elected to the Senate and he ought to be able to get to work for the people of Minnesota. We’ve always said that Norm Coleman deserved his day in court, and he got eight months. Now we expect Governor Pawlenty to do the right thing, follow the law, and sign the election certificate. From health care to the Supreme Court to getting our economy moving again, the challenges facing us are complex and we need Al Franken in the Senate. In this historic and urgent moment in our history, Minnesotans have gone long enough without full representation. Al Franken will be an critical voice on the issues before us and it’s time to let him get to work.”
Finally, it appears that Al Franken will be permitted to take the Senate seat he earned on November 4, assuming that former Senator Coleman finally does the right thing and faces the music.
Congratulations to Senator-elect Al Franken, and let us be thankful that Minnesota will finally enjoy full representation in Washington.
UPDATE: Former Senator Coleman has now conceded graciously. Congratulations again to Senator-elect Franken!
DC pundit Chris Cillizza recently handicapped the Hierarchy of Political Endorsements, and we thought it would be an interesting time to bring them out in light of the endorsements Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is losing to his primary opponent, Marco Rubio. Following is Mr. Cillizza's ranking of the (desired) endorsements for political candidates:
A quick primer on the endorsement hierarchy -- from most to least important:
The Symbolic Endorsement: Ted Kennedy backing Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries.
Unfortunately for Crist - whose own endorsement apparently carried Heavy Import during the 2008 campaign - Rubioooooooooooo! is sporting some heavy hitters of his own.
The Symbolic Endorsement: Former Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
No celebrity endorsements, yet, but now that Rubio has Huckabee, can Chuck Norris be far behind? Governor Crist ought to be terrified.
This number, of course, denotes the raw reelect numbers for Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, according to a recent Public Policy Polling survey. It is indicative of the Senator's, er, *middling* popularity back home, and backed by numbers which showed the Senator losing his reelection bid to someone named Generic Democrat, 41% to 38%.
The 2010 outlook continues to look bleak for first term Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Only 29 percent of North Carolina voters believe he should get another term, 49 percent prefer someone else while 22 percent are undecided, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted June 12-14.
Republicans say Burr should get another term by a tepid 49 percent to 26 percent with 26 percent undecided. Independents say he should not by 52 percent to 34 percent while Democrats, unsurprisingly, want to see him gone by 66 percent to 11 percent.
(...) And when asked if they would support Burr against an unnamed Democrat, 41 percent chose the Democrat to 38 percent for Burr and 21 percent undecided. The margin of error is 3.5 percent.
Needless to say, the Burr campaign didn't much cotton to numbers showing them losing to our friend Generic. So they started touting a (push) poll of their own, showing Burr leading potential Democratic opponent Elaine Marshall (but only after asking leading questions favorable to Burr).
Public Policy Polling countered...well, we'll let them tell the story.
As I wrote about yesterday, Roll Call had a story about what it identified as a Richard Burr internal poll that showed him leading Elaine Marshall. Burr's spokesman, Paul Shumaker, was quoted about the poll.
I pointed out that this was quite ironic given that two weeks ago Burr had told the News&Observer that our testing him against hypothetical opponents was 'ridiculous.'
Within an hour a commenter showed up on our blog saying that it was not actually an internal poll, but had come from the Carolina Strategy Group. The CSG is a new Republican automated polling firm in North Carolina (I'm pretty sure created to counter us) that is run by...the very same Paul Shumaker who is Burr's main political consultant.
Sooooo...Burr said it was "ridiculous" to poll him against hypothetical opponents. Subsequently, PPP polls him against Generic Dem, and...he loses.
So he counters by...letting his staff members (who apparently double as partisan pollsters) run a (push) poll showing him leading...a hypothetical opponent.
But that poll was NOT an internal, of course. The Burr campaign wouldn't bother commissioning such a "ridiculous" poll.
Of course.
Interesting…Senator John Thune’s campaign committee launched a website several weeks ago called Supreme Court Watch Online.
Purporting to be a conservative "news" site, it is actually a blog designed to batter Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and it is owned and operated by…wait for it…”Friends of John Thune”.
In other words, the campaign arm of Thune’s operation is using the Sotomayor nomination to try and gin up Righteous Anger among their conservative base and enhance Sen. Thune's reelection bid.
Fair enough: this has happened before, and will happen again. The only real noteworthy aspect to this is how beautifully it failed.
Evidently, though the GOP continues to flail at the wind over Sotomayor, they’re not getting any traction. Because today Thune came out and said:
“She doesn’t have the punch out there in terms of fundraising and recruiting, I think — at least so far,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who most likely will be elected as the No. 4 Republican in Senate leadership this week.
Shorter Thune: "we would like to raise money off of the Democratic Supreme Court nominee...and we tried! We tried hard! I personally did my best! But nobody's buying what we're selling".
Oh, well, back to the old drawing board...
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