First, a couple of undeniable facts.:
1) New Hampshire is presently purple, but by the end of the decade it will be thoroughly blue. It’s all the result of an insidious plot in which New Hampshire lured Massachusetts residents to the Granite State by having no income tax or sales tax while Taxachusetts of course had healthy ones. Many people and companies who didn’t like paying more taxes than necessary relocated from Massachusetts to the home of Living Free or Dying Hard. I know what you’re thinking – “I thought liberals liked paying taxes. This should have bolstered New Hampshire’s conservative population.” Alas, this isn’t quite correct. Liberals don’t like paying taxes so much as they like other people paying taxes. Anyway, they voted with their feet.
2) This dynamic means the reelection campaign of an incumbent Republican Senator who lugs around the name of the most famous New Hampshire Republican of the past two generations is especially problematic.
SAID REPUBLICAN HAS A NAME, and it is John Sununu Junior. The most recent poll matching Sununu up against his most likely opponent, former Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen, shows Sununu trailing, 56% to 34%. Horrifyingly, this result paints a much rosier picture than the next most recent poll that showed Sununu losing 57% to 29%.
At the risk of sounding unduly pessimistic, Sununu’s quest for reelection could charitably be labeled “quixotic”. “Hopeless” is probably a more precise term. Don’t weep for Sununu; he’s a smart guy, even has a degree from MIT to prove it. If he chooses to go the K Street route, he’ll be pulling down 7 figures a year in no time. If he prefers to spend his future more nobly, I’m reliably informed that a background in the Senate is something that’s relatively easy to monetize.
With his political future a foregone conclusion, Sununu faces a stark choice. He can mortgage his values and his principles in a vain quest to get 38% of the vote, or he can go out with his boots on. Rick Santorum was never my favorite Senator until he ran a campaign in 2006 that was remarkable for its stark and sometimes brutal honesty. He acquitted himself nobly, and a leadership position in any kind of conservative movement is his for the asking because of the kind of campaign he ran. Jim Talent and Conrad Burns have no such options available.
The Republican portion of the Senate desperately needs someone to put the war into its proper strategic and intellectual context. Pardon me for being a cynic, but I don’t think Trent Lott is going to be the guy. And while John McCain has been heroically stalwart on the war, he still (publicly at least) clings to the outdated notion that we’re battling a numerically tiny band of Islamist nutjobs. This toxic piece of political correctness, born literally in the hours after 9/11, has hamstrung the war effort ever since.
Right now the painful fact is 2008 will be a very tough year for Republicans unless something seismic happens between now and November ‘08. Rather than trying to nibble away at the war effort, something that will be ruinous to the country and do nothing for their political prospects, Republican Senators would be much better served trying to make seismic things (like victory in Iraq and a decisive engagement with Iran) happen.
John Sununu Jr. is a smart and talented guy. I’m assuming he didn’t waltz through MIT without possessing more intelligence and intellectual curiosity than is the norm on Capitol Hill. History’s calling, Senator. Do the right thing.
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