DMKY May 22nd, 2007

As this blog has been saying all along, Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher easily won reelection tonight with 50 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, in a race that had 19.8 percent turnout.

Fletcher’s margin reflected his approval rating among Republicans in the two most recent tracking polls from SUSA.

This past week or so have been a very bad week for Senator Mitch McConnell, folks. Really, it’s not been a good seven months for him, but it just gets worse and worse.

See, unfortunately for Mitch, being in the national spotlight as Senate Minority Leader has brought ever more attention and scrutiny on the man and his methods, and that increase has only served to underscore just how inferior a man and leader he is. He’s inarticulate, he’s terrible at political strategy (tactics, he’s got, but strategy, he doesn’t), and he’s void of new ideas and vision.

Plus, with this immigration reform agenda that he’s pushing, he’s going to alienate his crazy, foaming-at-the-mouth base even more. Bush’s numbers have fallen because of it, and I bet McConnell’s do, too.

He’s got a bitterly divided Republican party here in Kentucky, and there’s even banter of a primary challenge against McConnell from Larry Forgy. Forgy could put his name on the ballot and not spend a dime and take 30 percent or more of the vote in that primary. The Louis B. Nunn and Ernie Fletcher wings of the party would love nothing more than an opportunity to embarrass the heck out of McConnell so.

So, tonight we bid farewell to Mitch McConnell’s sick-o-phant Anne Northup, whose political career all but ended for good tonight. It’s a moment that caps a twelve month period for Anne that she must be describing as her own personal Anne-us horribilis.

• Gubernatorial race '07
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