[Pubbie]

As I said on another thread, now that Breaux has made it official, then I think the Rats will not even try to monetarily defend Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and instead spend all their money on saving their seats in LA and FL.

[Flux Capacitor]

----As I said on another thread, now that Breaux has made it official, then I think the Rats will not even try to monetarily defend Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and instead spend all their money on saving their seats in LA and FL.----

That is one heartening fact. Even if Louisiana ends up screwing the pooch on its third statewide election in as many years, a strong GOP candidate will force the DSCC to expend precious cash and resources here, something it wouldn't have had to do if Breaux were running again.

And frankly, I think the Dems would have had to open up the pocketbook for Graham even if he were to run again. From what I understand, that "moderate's" bizarre, hard-left, short-lived presidential campaign alienated a lot of the folks back home.

-Dan

[mwl1]

Now that Breaux has made it official, then I think the Rats will not even try to monetarily defend Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and instead spend all their money on saving their seats in LA and FL.

Exactly, the significance of the Breaux retirement is not capturing the Louisiana seat, although that is clearly a possibility, but rather it forces the RATS to devote resources to defend another open seat, thus bankrupting their efforts elsewhere.

A gain of 5-6 seats is clearly doable next year... for those who assert that this still won't get our judicial nominees approved, this is wrong. Anything over 55 votes will scare enough RATS up for re-election in 2006 to bolt and seek political cover. We can bribe the rest with goodies. 55-56 seats is about the threshold we need to open up the bulk of the federal circuit court appointments.