son of paul running for president. rubio running for prez, and skipping senate re-election. the senate must be a boring place. the senate races look bad for us. kirk, toomey, portman, and an open seat in fl.
I don’t think it will be that bad in ‘16 for some of those seats/incumbents. Kirk is the Combiner choice in IL and serves them well in his current position. Toomey may face a rematch with Sestak, and I saw polling that indicated the latter was far behind. Portman (whom I personally want primaried) is facing career politician Ted Strickland, and he, too, isn’t much of a threat (only if Conservatives refuse to vote for Portman on par with DeWine in 2006 does he have a shot).
As for FL, we’ve got an excellent farm team of candidates statewide that should be able to hold Rubio’s seat such as Adam Putnam or Jeff Atwater (although I’d rather Atwater go for Governor in 2018). The Dems only have nutters, such as Lil Debbie and even Alan Grayson mentioned. Either one would be the Dem equivalent of Katherine Harris in being an unelectable and divisive candidate statewide.
I think we have decent shots at knocking off Michael Bennet in CO (who lucked out by having the wrong opponent in 2010) and Harry Reid should be toast this time (against any of the GOP statewide officeholders in NV — I’m personally rooting for Attorney General Adam Laxalt, though he may be too green to run). We should also be running younger candidates for office across the board. All these sad old RINOs and establishment types. We need to aggressively recruit hard-charging men and women from the 30s to the early 50s for Senate seats.
The Senate is nothing more than a geriatric clinic, with many members looking to stay until they’re carried out feet first and to hell with everything and everyone else.