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Seats to Defend?

Here’s David Freddoso [1] at The Corner, upon hearing Kit Bond (R) Missouri is retiring at the end of his term:

That will open up a tough seat for Republicans to defend. They have had a bad streak in Missouri statewide races, beginning with Sen. Jim Talent’s loss in 2006 and Rep. Kenny Hulshof’s (R.) disastrous run for governor last year. (John McCain did narrowly carry the state, however.)

The first Senate retirement announcement came earlier, from Sam Brownback (R.) of neighboring Kansas. He will be leaving Washington next year to run for governor.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that in addition to Bond and Brownback, Mel Martinez of Florida called it quits earlier. That makes three Republicans retiring from the Senate in 2010 so far, at least two of whose seats will be quite difficult to defend. 

Ehhhh… I’m not convicned.  Nor, at the moment, am I much worried.  First of all, that McCan carried that state, by a slim margin IMV has no connection to how much conservative support Reublicans are getting there, since McCain isn’t a conservative…. that’s why he lost the election.

More,  Congressional Democrats are busy chewing on data given them shortly after the last election that says they’re going to be losing on the order of 50 seats in the House and a similar percentage of seats in the Senate, in the mid-terms.   That projection, mind you, assumes the Recession doesn’t get turned into an outright depression by the combo of Obama and Congressional Democrats… as seems likely, based on Obama’s speech yesterday.

That projection, was also issued before most of the corruption details of Rangel, Dodd, Blogo, Schumer and the rest came out. (Yes, Schumer too… Indy Bank isn’t going away soon.) 

I can’t imagine that the backlash from all of that isn’t going to be far worse than their internal numbers are suggesting.