Lincolnite

Now that Mike made his announcement this morning, you could feel the collective sigh of relief that Jon Bruning won’t be representing the state in the Senate. It will be an interesting race if Bob from NY gets in, especially if he maintains his stance on the war.

Gigolo.

He may get bored with that and run for president in 2012, assuming a Republican does not win in 2008. Either that or he’ll take over as Husker football coach when BC is fired some time in the next 2-3 years.

Sorry Jon Bruning, we hardly knew ya. Thanks for making a game of the race early on, and for scaring Chuck enough into not running. It’s been fun, and I still maintain that without Mike in the house you’d have had a shot and would have won the thing. Now, sadly (for you), you’ll need to wait your turn. Ben’s seat will be open in a few years. You and Dave (the gov) can duke it out then.

In the meantime… Hal, for real? Come on dude, back away from your ego. No chance. That nameless dude from Columbus that keeps teasing that he will run? No chance. When I can spout of names like Mike, Bob, Dave, Ben, and Chuck, and everyone who reads this knows who I mean, you can’t be a nameless dude from Columbus and have a shot at a statewide office.

Fletch is right. That’d be like some unknown named Chuck beating heavyweights like Don Stenberg and popular governor Ben Nelson.

And look where that got us. It won’t happen again. It happened because there were no Republican heavyweights he was running against. You surely can’t call Stenberg a heavyweight - even though he nearly knocked off Nelson later on, he really wasn’t a popular dude. He certainly wasn’t a guy that was a popular mayor, a popular governor, and a member of the US Cabinet. I’m all for the nameless dude from Columbus running, don’t get me wrong. He just doesn’t have a shot. And he can’t go all Pete Ricketts by buying name recognition.

“And look where that got us. It won

“And if it does happen again, we’ll run him out of office, just like we did with Hagel!”

It’s ok to break from the party as long as you’re a Democrat, Neal. 😉

You know Jon Bruning is going to want to get right in the mud with this race. It’s going to be awesome to watch.

It’s not Hagel’s voting record with Bush that’s hurt his standings with people here, it’s his stance that doesn’t jive with the majority of his constituents.

All the Bush hate cracks me up. You do realize he can’t run again, right? And he’ll be off to a ranch in Texas or on the speaker circuit in January of 2009? I love how all the Dems running for president rail against him like he’s their competition and what’s holding them back. They aren’t running against him. And these senators that just rip on him and shout on and on about his low approval ratings - last I saw, his is around 29%, but theirs is like 12% or so. Pot, meet kettle. The Lefties are mad because they sent a majority Senate and Congress into DC to end the war, and somehow the lame duck Pres keeps winning that issue every time.

Gene, I think you’re right - it will be a fun race to watch and Jon will sling the mud, but I don’t think he stands a chance against Mike. I think if he slings too much mud against him, it will hurt his chances at any larger office down the road. Mike’s a popular guy here, with both parties (at least historically). The Rep party would be better to invest the effort into a solid candidate to take down Ben in 5 years than to make this thing get ugly.

I would agree with that. Also, I don’t think it’s necessarily that he’s getting bored. People who currently hold office usually have a lot more success getting elected to other offices. Although I wonder if Johanns being somewhat out of the political spotlight for the past couple of years is going to hurt him in the beginning. I mean, everyone’s going to be VERY familiar with him and Kerrey at the end after all of the robocalls. 😉