Josh Kraushaar reports that Republican Rep. Zach Wamp (Tennessee-3) will not run for re-election in 2010 for his House seat but will instead run for Governor.  Former Senator Bill Frist, who was seen as a possible candidate, has already announced that he will not seek the Republican nomination for Governor of Tennessee in 2010.

Wamp has an 85% rating from the National Right to Life for the 110th Congress and a 92% Lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union.

Kraushaar speculates that Wamp’s seat should be easy for Republicans to hold on to since it is a heavy Republican district.

My two cents: Rep. Wamp seems like a fine choice for Governor of Tennessee.  His election wouldn’t send me into ecstasy, but it would certainly be an improvement for the people of Tennessee over current Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen.

Next year, some 36 states will hold gubernatorial elections. Of those 36 states, 20 Governor’s Mansions are held by Democrats and 16 by Republicans. With the current party breakdown being 28 Democrats and 22 Republicans, it isn’t entirely implausible to see Republicans holding the majority of the excecutive branches come November, 2010. As I look over the prospective races, I honestly don’t see any state that is “out of reach.” Here are the Republicans I see as the best candidates in 2010.

Kansas: Sen. Sam Brownback
Maine: State House Minority Leader Josh Tardy
Michigan: Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land
Oklahoma: Congresswoman and Former Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin
Oregon: Congressman Greg Walden
Pennsylvania: Former Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton
Tennessee: Fmr. Senator Bill Frist
Wyoming: Second Lady Lynne Cheney OR Secretary of State Max Maxfield
New Mexico: Fmr. Congresswoman Heather Wilson (really no other candidate)
Alabama: Congressman Bob Aderholt
California: Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner OR Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman
Georgia: Lt. Governor Casey Cagle
Hawaii: Lt. Governor James Aiona
Nebraska: Lt. Governor Rick Sheehy
Rhode Island: Warwick, RI Mayor Scott Avedisian
South Carolina: Henry McMaster
South Dakota: Lt. Governor Dennis Daugaard
Colorado: Fmr. Congressman Tom Tancredo
Arkansas: Congressman John Boozman
Illinois: Congressman Peter Roskam (save Mark Kirk for Senate run)
Iowa: State House Minority Leader Christopher Rants
Maryland: Fmr. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele
Massachusetts: Fmr. Gov. and Lt. Gov Jane Swift
New Hampshire:
New York: Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Ohio: Former Congressman John Kasich
Wisconsin: Congressman Paul Ryan
Alaska: Gov. Sarah Palin
Connecticut: Gov. Jodi Rell
Florida: Gov. Charlie Crist
Idaho: Gov. Butch Otter
Minnesota: Gov. Tim Pawlenty
Nevada: Congressman Dean Heller
Texas: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
Vermont: Gov. Jim Douglas

Democratic Senator Dirty Harry Reid (Nevada) has a mess on his hands.  Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is close to naming someone to fill President-Elect Obama’s Senate seat.  The man is former Illinois Attorney General and Comptroller Roland Burris.  Dirty Harry has already claimed that Burris will not be seated by the US Senate but I would like to wonder out-loud how the African-American community will feel about Dirty Harry refusing to seat the man who would become the only current African American Senator?  

Special thanks goes to the Illinois Democratic legislature who refused to avoid this mess by having a simple special election to fill the seat.  When will the good people of Illinois wake up and realize that Democrats are a plague on their house?

This can end up two different ways both of which can greatly benefit Republicans.  Dirty Harry can refuse to sit the man who would become the only current serving African American Senator in the US Senate and leave himself down one Democratic vote for the near future as well run the risk of upsetting the African American community.  Or Dirty Harry can sit Burris and give the Republicans a minimum of two years of Corrupt Democratic Congress propoganda, as well as a nasty 2010 Illinois Democratic Primary and a good chance of a Republican pick-up of the seat in the general election.

Playing off of Moe’s post:

http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2008/12/29/and-here-i-thought-that-the-great-netroot-betrayal-was-merely-a-tagline/#comment-9053

This shows just why… as well as the way to break the back of the Obama administration.

Obama can not deliver everything for everybody. This should be a given seeing how he was sold to the public as everything for everybody. Hope and change isn’t policy it’s hype… dreams…

Now the best way to seperate the man from the myth is to bleed him out, show what he is really made of… smoke and mirrors and nothing more.

Already his followers have, in the face of reality, scaled back their ‘dreams’. We must keep throwing this cold water on them… split them up…  make them see him as the hack that we know that he is. What am I talking about? MoveOn and DKos folks should end up feeling the exact same way about Obama as we all felt about Bush when he made the No Child deal with Teddy Kennedy

Now there are many, many ways to do this… but key to this is for all of us… and more importantly GOP members in the Senate to all stick together. Nobody wants to be the last GOP Senator to be between the masses and ‘free’ health care. So…

Take the House bill on health care… sure to be the furthest to the left… and announce it to be DOA… a non-starter. RNC… get ads out detailing just how bad it is… (however it might be) Then offer the GOP / Free market “compramise” Then let the House wingnuts go crazy. Then regert that we can’t reach a compramise. then call on Obama to personally come to us (the GOP Senate members) to broker the deal.

Then Obama is in a pickle… make a deal with the GOP… and get health care… and screw over his leftwing followers… or let the whole thing go down the tubes and ‘let down’ the rest of the country.

If… IF… the GOP can stay together… hold fast against the full weight of the screaming left… and bleed him on this, the first big bill… we will have him! The next time… every time… he wants to get something done he’s faced with that same choice… us or them… and them means no deal.

By spring of 2010 the left with be crazed with the success of the ‘GOP’ agenda… something that we had better be throwing in their face. and that gives us, the GOP, something to run on in 2010.

Stand fast guys! Split the left and bleed him… cut him up and bleed him out!

….please let it be Harry Reid’s.  I would love nothing more than this arrogant do-nothing “leader” get the boot in two Novembers.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senator Reid met with his campaign contributors late last month and expects to have around $3 million in his pocket by the end of 2008. Not too shabby for money, but there’s another number Reid must worry about:

Sen. Reid, however, faces a potentially tough fight. A recent Research 2000 poll of likely voters put his approval rating at 38% and his disapproval rating at 54%, a possible reflection of voters’ displeasure with gridlock and partisanship in Washington. And while Nevada broke for President-elect Barack Obama by 12 percentage points in November, the state voted for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

I have no idea what Daschle’s ratings were in 2004 going up against John Thune (who I wish would be in a leadership position seeon) but 38% isn’t good.  The article goes on to say that Reid is only up by six points (46-40) according to an early Research 2000 poll against Jon Porter, who lost his House seat after three terms representing an area outside of Las Vegas.  Brian Krolicki, Nevada’s Lt. Governor has also thrown his hat in the ring, but he was indicted for Enron-like accounting practices after his candidacy was announced.  Sound suspicious?

Republicans shouldn’t get too cocky, however.  After all:

Democrats say Nevada is a former swing state that has swung to their camp. The party now has a 100,000-person registration advantage there.

In 2004, the last time Sen. Reid was up for re-election, the number of registered Republicans and Democrats was about the same.

I wonder if that 100,000 counts the Dallas Cowboys roster and all of the other fraudulent ACORN registrations brought to light (by non MSM outlets) prior to the election?  A final note of concern is that I thought I heard on election night that the Las Vegas area accounts for 71% of Nevada voters.  If that’s true, then Mike Duncan’s “ignore big cities because they have more minority and younger voters” strategy won’t fly if we want to pick up this seat and make Nevada red again in 2012.

We need to get Harry Reid out of office, and we need to get him out ASAP!  I’m pledging a contribution the Republican nominee to get this do-nothing crook out of office.  We can’t look to 2012 unless we make some huge inroads in 2010, and I can’t think of a better start by getting Reid thrown out of Washington.

In 2010, will economic conservatives in Kansas be able to distinguish any difference between Congressmen Todd Tiahrt and Jerry Moran?  Moran has already declared his intent to run for the US Senate in 2010.  And if Tiahrt enters the Senate race (which appears likely), he will tell conservatives that he is more conservative than Moran.  But will there be much substance behind that claim?

On one issue — earmarks — there is an opportunity for one of them to claim the higher ground.  Yet neither demonstrates an understanding of one of the main reasons why Republicans were voted out of the congressional majority:  the GOP has little credibility on the issue of managing budgets.

A few days ago, we asked readers:

• In the likely 2010 US Senate primary, should economic conservatives in Kansas require a “no-earmark” pledge from Todd Tiahrt and Jerry Moran?

There were 36 votes, and the answer was an overwhelming (75%) “yes.”

One person commented:

These are the sentiments of 75% of the members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation.  And that’s why 74% of Republicans and 62% of independents would throw out the entire Congress, including Republicans.

For economic conservatives in the Republican party, the above comment is viewed as nonsense:  if unnecessary spending won’t be cut from the budget, then Republicans should vote down the budget.

View the graph of the poll results here.

News from The Kansas Progress at KansasProgress.com.

From the diaries by Erick.

In the Kansas First Congressional District:

While it’s true that Kansas Senator Tim Huelskamp and long-time Brownback staffer Rob Wasinger will both fight for the social conservative vote, Huelskamp has a strong initial advantage not only with social conservates (60-70% of the Kansas GOP electorate) but with all Republicans because he has built up name ID and a very reliable pro-growth, pro-family voting record.  There are a significant number of voters who won’t be persuaded to vote against Huelskamp.  For the most part, Huelskamp is likely welcoming the entrance of other candidates, regardless of ideology:  Article — “Barker to campaign for First District seat”

Read More →

(We had trouble posting the HTML code for the actual poll, so we’re providing a link).

We’d love to know your thoughts, so head over here and let us know:

• In the likely Senate primary in 2010:  Should economic conservatives in Kansas require that Congressmen Moran and Tiahrt make a “no earmarks” pledge?

Michael O’Brien speculates that we may have not seen the last of retiring Republican Rep. Vito Fossella who was recently sentanced to jail for five days for a DWI.  Fossella is holding a thank you gathering for his supporters this weekend and O’Brien speculates this may be a testing of the waters to see if he would have the backing to compete in an attempt to win back his seat from Democrat Representative-Elect Michael McMahon (New York-13) in 2010.  Along with the DWI Fossella has admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock.

My two cents: If Republicans are going to earn back Americans’ trust we can’t do it with men like Fossella.  I think he should stay retired.