I'm the biggest pessimist this blog has. But I'm also willing to grasp at any straw that floats my way. So when Ken Avidor published the result of a poll commissioned by KSTP this evening showing Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg with a small lead over Bachmann in this very Republican district: I grasped at that. And when a GOP strategy document is leaked and quoted in Politico--it indicates that Bachmann is now on the GOP's "this politician is GONE list"--I'm grasping at that, too.
Bachmann's goner list status is mentioned down at the bottom of this excerpt.
GOP 'goner' list warns of House rout
By JOSH KRAUSHAAR & REID WILSON | 10/23/08 5:34 PM EDT
Don Young
Rep. Don Young's re-election bid has been written off in a GOP strategy memo.
Photo: AP
An internal document circulating among House Republicans warns of an impending congressional bloodbath, listing 58 Republican-held House seats being at risk, and 11 already considered as good as gone. As many as 34 GOP-held seats are in serious jeopardy of swinging to Democrats, the assessment shows.
..Drafted by a Republican consultant, the document ranks seats on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most likely for a Democratic takeover. Eleven members received a 5, meaning the seat is gone unless “a significant turn of events” changes things in the final two weeks. An additional seven seats are ranked as a 4, in the leaning Democratic category, and 16 seats are in the tossup category.
One well-connected Republican operative told Politico that the list, if anything, understated the number of members needing a political lifeline. The operative also said the GOP is all but writing off the seats of Reps. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), Joseph Knollenberg (R-Mich.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Phil English (R-Pa.), and the open New Mexico House seat of retiring Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), who is running for the Senate.
If she loses perhaps the safest Republican seat in Minnesota, that's a huge step forward for the people of the Sixth District. Hundreds of them have lost their homes and savings in the financial crisis, while she's raved about lending to the wrong races and taken more than a hundred thousand from national finance lobbyists. The people of the Sixth (I'm one of 'em) deserve some real representation, after two years of this extremist idiocy in Congress. |
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