You know, when John Boozman started smelling Blanche Lincoln’s blood in the water and jumped out of his relative obscurity to run for the U.S. Senate, a lot of observers (namely in the comments section of Chicken Little’s Retirement Home) christianed him the next U.S. Senator from Arkansas. Those of us in the know suspected that might be jumping the gun, and from where I’m sitting now, I’d say Democrats (either Halter or the hapless Senator Lincoln) would be very lucky to run against Boozman in the fall.
There are a number of reasons for this, but the three that stand out, at the moment, are:
-Boozman’s support of the no strings attached, Wall Street bailout.
- His support for privatizing social security. (Let senior voters find out about that and see what happens.)
-His globe trotting abuse of the tax payer dollar.
And none of this even begins to touch on his status as a Washington insider or the lack of any coherent message (much less energy) in his campaign. Now, there’s no guarantee that we’ll get Boozman out of the GOP slugfest. We could well get Gilbert Baker out of the mix, or one of the others competing in the gallery of wingnuttery. But trust me, there’s no reason for Democrats to fear any of these guys in the fall. That’s not to say we should be complacent, by any means. But we shouldn’t write this seat off yet for the general election, not by any means. In fact, the more we see out of the Republican fold, (and one of the many good things about the Lincoln vs Halter matchup is that they’ve faded into the background) the better our chances at holding the seat look…especially if Halter is the nominee.
