GOP Hopes To Pick Up House Seat If Melancon Runs For Senate
If Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA) does end up running for Senate against GOP incumbent David Vitter -- pitting a relatively conservative Democrat against a Christian Right champion whose career became mired in the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal of 2007 -- it could be good news for the Republicans in at least one respect. That is, the GOP feels pretty good that they can pick up Melancon's open district.
"It is one of the few districts in the country that actually trended more Republican last cycle," a Republican source told us. The district voted 61%-37% for John McCain in 2008, up from 58%-41% for George W. Bush in 2004.
The national GOP had been aiming to soften up Melancon for a challenge in his seat for 2010, anyway -- for example, he was the target of recent radio ads. If the seat opens up, and there is no Democrat with the advantage of incumbency, Republicans will see it as a ripe opportunity for a pick-up. "The fact is that Charlie Melancon was intimidated into running for the Senate," the source boasted. "He saw the writing on the wall and reconsidered the DSCC's offer."
A Democratic source, on the other hand, says there are other factors that could keep the seat in Dem hands. Conservative Dems like Melancon have performed well in the district; Sen. Mary Landrieu carried it in her 2008 re-election; there is an existing strong Democratic infrastructure here; and a potential Senate candidacy by Melancon should help turn out additional Democratic support down the ticket.
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Louisiana is expected to lose a House seat after the 2010 census, and apparently Melancon decided to run for the Senate because he feared his seat would be the one targeted. So even if the Republicans take it, it will have no impact beyoind 2012, when Louisiana will likely have 5 Republicans and 1 New Orleans based Democrat in its House delegation.
Beyond that, getting rid of a Blue Dog Democrat and adding another right-wing Southern Republican will only result in making the Democratic caucus more progressive and the Republican caucus further out of step with the country outside the Deep South. That seems like win-win to me.
June 22, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with this, I also say be careful about sentiments like this. Remember that over the course of a decade, the Republicans basically "purified" themselves into insanity.
June 22, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does it seem like a big potential problem to you that the Democrats may become too unified, too much in lockstep?
The right wing has made the Republican Party into an ideological unit. It took them about 40 years to do it, and now it's come crashing down.
The white, conservative Deep South has been estranged from the majority in the rest of the country for 175 years. For historical reasons having to do with the Democratic Party's dominant role in the South until the 1960s, there are still a handful of white Southern Blue Dog Democrats like Melancon, Gene Taylor in Mississippi, or Lincoln Davis in Tennessee. Their disappearance is as natural as the melting of ice in the spring. We don't have to purge them, as the Republican right wing did starting in 1968 with Thomas Kuchel, continuing through John Lindsay, Clifford Case and Jacob Javits to Joe Schwarz in 2006, Wayne Gilchrest in 2008, and Arlen Specter in 2009. The Democratic Party is not the mirror image of the Republican Party, and the loss of a few ideologically incompatible Members of Congress from an isolated region of the country is not comparable with the systematic nationwide purge within the Republican Party which has occurred over the last 40 years.
June 22, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink