Baseless Senate Race Speculation

How about a 2010 Senate Race Nightmare Scenario to go with your morning coffee?

No one doubts that Jim Bunning hates Mitch McConnell and the rest of the republican party leadership with a white-hot flame. Back in the spring, he threatened to step down, handing Democratic Governor Steve Beshear the chance to fill the seat with a Democrat.

But that was before Beshear endorsed - albeit as weakly as possible - his lite guv Dan Mongiardo in the Senate race.

And that was before Jack Conway blew the doors off political fundraising in Kentucky with a second-quarter haul of $3.25 million - more than four times what Mongiardo raised.

So here's the nightmare scenario:

Bunning, senile and infuriated, fails to take the changed topography into account and steps down in an attempt to fuck over McConnell by handing Harry Reid a 61st Senator.

But this puts Beshear into an impossible bind. He knows now that Mongiardo is an inexcusably weak candidate, but having endorsed Dr. Dan he can't name somebody else to the seat without looking like an idiot.

So Beshear names Mongiardo to the U.S. Senate, where he attaches himself by the hip to the un-Democratic Blue Dogs and votes against health care reform. A proud-and-out homophobe, Mongiardo also votes against repealing DADT and DOMA.

Next year, republican Trey Grayson slaughters Mongiardo in the general election, keeping the seat safely in McConnell's hands.

There is one way Beshear can avoid that outcome, assuming Bunning does leap off that cliff: he can announce that for the good of the Commonwealth, he can't undermine the integrity of the Democratic primary by appointing someone who is already a candidate. So he appoints someone who is unlikely to run for re-election next year, someone who is a Real Democrat who can be counted on to vote with President Obama, someone to whom neither Mongiardo nor Conway can object.

U.S. Senator Julian Carroll, anyone?