From Rasmussen:
Senator John McCain’s future in the U.S. Senate may be a little less assured than previously thought.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely 2010 Republican Primary voters in Arizona finds the longtime incumbent in a virtual tie with potential challenger J.D. Hayworth. McCain earns 45% of the vote, while Hayworth picks up 43%.
14 Comments
Start a Tea Bag Party, J.D. You know you wanna.
Good time to get rid of this guy. A great citizen, a horrible senator.
Is that a photo of McCain doing his best Capt. Al impression? Yaaarrrrrrrr!
Sounds like good news for a Democratic senate hopeful.
So McCain’s getting ‘scozzafavaed.’
If J.D. Blowhard does pull it off and win the G.O.P. nomination, a lot of Democrats will be kicking themselves for not making the run.
Fantastic…JD will push him further and further to the right. If McCain loses…JD could get slaughtered as a total rightwinger…if McCain wins, he might have done a bit too much to embrace the right…and enough for someone like Rodney Glassman to give them a run
I shall watch this possibility with great interest.
The only way Hayworth wins a primary is if he cuts a deal with Simcox. Remember him? Absent a bargain, the anti-McCain vote is divided and diluted.
and John McCain still has terrific name recognition and Presidential stature.
Carol,
I’ve actually had a wacko (undoubtedly one of the wackos who now attends tea parties and probably supports either Simcox or Hayworth) tell me with a straight face that McCain threw last year’s election intentionally (and that Palin had then tried to save it herself.) You’re assuming that GOP voters are rational but the Glenn Beck-driven fringe is anything but rational.
Besides, ‘presidential candidate’ doesn’t always mean much. I mean, it sure helped George McGovern and Fritz Mondale the next time they ran for the Senate, didn’t it? And although Nixon resurrected himself later, let’s not forget that in two years he went from almost beating JFK to getting trounced by Pat Brown just running to be Governor of California.
McCain’s problem (I heard this from a Democrat but it’s true and it does ring a bell with Republicans and independents too,) is precisely that he’s so focused on national stuff he forgets where he’s supposed to be representing. Name three things that McCain has done for Arizona. You can’t, can you? One reason we are hurting so much here is other states have Senators who take care of their states, but McCain in his ‘pork buster’ crusade volunteers Arizona as first on the list for not getting any federal help. As a resident of rural Arizona (where so-called ‘pork’ is important in helping these small communities) I can say he’s not too popular (referencing the above poll, if it were taken in the small Republican town I live in, I suspect that here Hayworth would crush McCain.)
Good point about Simcox, Rex, but I think JD will get more than Simcox will. The interesting thing is what we know about primaries. The moderates typically don’t show, independents who vote in GOP primaries (not for GOP candidates in a general)…are, well, hmmm you get what I am saying…and there are fewer of them. Those who are “inspired” will turn out, those who are not will have to be begged to do so, so that they don’t get a Hayworth on the ticket.
Rodney is starting to look pretty smart for throwing his hat in the ring. Any other dem candidates looking at it? I bet polls like these will turn some heads…Gabby? Janet?
Also, Rodney,
Simcox was named in this poll too. He got 4%. He did much better in the previous poll, when Hayworth was not named. Which proves the point, that voters are sick of McCain and want somebody else, preferably someone who bothers to attend to Arizona business instead of just worrying about making headlines in Washington.
Ask the Governor how much money McCain channeled to Arizona via the stimulus. Even other conservative Republicans (such as Senator Shelby of Alabama or Chuck Grassley of Iowa) have a much better track record than our Senators do of making sure that their states do get a fair shake of federal dollars.
Whoops, that last post was directed at Rex, not Rodney.