Kentucky GOP Rebelling Against Mitch?

Mark Nickolas at Bluegrass Report cites a Robert Novak column that claims Kentucky republicans may be planning to give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a primary challenge.

But just when it looks like 2008 is going to be our best chance ever to defeat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, bad news steps up to the plate and delivers a high slow one right to the center fielder.


Democrat Greg Stumbo, our apparently insane state Attorney General, is hinting that he will run against McConnell next year. McConnell is throwing a party at the news.


Back in December, Stumbo was flying high, having slapped Governor Ernie Fletcher hard over political hiring, and looked like a strong candidate for governor.


Then he got a look at Traitor and Criminal Bruce Lunsford’s $5 million campaign chest, and announced he’d run as Lunsford’s lite guv.


Up until that moment, Stumbo was something of a hero to Democrats, and was generally acknowledged as one of the top political minds in the state.


After he joined Lunsford, Stumbo had to stay on the move to keep away from the gentlemen in white coats from Eastern State Mental Hospital.


Allying himself with a republican who betrayed the democratic party lost Stumbo the respect and support of tens of thousands of Democrats, many of whom voted for Steve Beshear in the gubernatorial primary as a protest against Lunsford and Stumbo.


After losing the primary to Beshear by 20 points in May, Stumbo then sealed his status as party pariah by declaring it unconstitutional for state universities to let employees purchase health insurance for domestic partners.


The same tens of thousands of Kentucky Democrats who would have stayed home this November rather than vote for Lunsford-Stumbo if Lunsford had won the primary are the same Democrats who will skip the Senate race on the ballot in 2008 if Stumbo is McConnell’s Democratic challenger.


However, the combination of McConnell’s vulnerability and Stumbo’s unpopularity is likely to draw several more Democrats into the primary race. The filing deadline isn’t until January 30, 2008, so there’s plenty of time for stronger candidates to come out of the woodwork, along with the usual collection of losers (I’m talkin’ to YOU, Steve Henry.)


The leading Democrat in the state is still Rep. Ben Chandler, although freshman Rep. John Yarmuth is moving up fast, despite being a proud liberal in a supposed red state. Yarmuth is probably too green to challenge McConnell next year, but if McConnell really tanks before January, Ben might jump in.


If Steve Beshear becomes Governor in December, he will be the official leader of Kentucky Democrats, but neither he nor his lite guv candidate Dan Mongiardo are likely to file for the Senate six weeks after inauguration. If they lose, they will not only have no chance in hell of beating McConnell, they'll be run out of the state on a rail.


Charlie Owen, a Louisville businessman with deep pockets, keeps hinting about running for something, but except for a losing run for lite guv as Chandler's running mate in 2003, he's a political novice.


So is Andrew Horne, who lost the democratic primary to Yarmuth last year, but Horne is also a retired Army Lt. Colonel and an Iraq War veteran. Horne is the darling of Kentucky progressives, who would dearly love to see a real soldier take on the draft-dodging, war-mongering McConnell.


Don't count gubernatorial primary losers Lunsford or Gatewood Galbraith out, either, which means we're probably looking at a four- to six-person Democratic primary for McConnell's seat next year.


Robert Novak claims that McConnell is unbeatable and that Kentucky republicans are nevertheless contemplating challenging him in the primary. Good grief. Anybody who's spent five minutes watching Kentucky politics for the last two years knows that Kentucky republicans even considering challenging McConnell is not just a death-knell for McConnell but an unmistakable Sign of the Apocolypse.

Once again, the place to join the anti-McConnell bandwagon is Ditch Mitch.