If Republicans really run the table next year, they'll hold open seats in Florida, New Hampshire and Ohio; they'll save endangered seats in Kentucky and North Carolina; and they'll win Democratic seats in Illinois, Delaware, Arkansas and Connecticut. Right now, that's as good as they could do, and it would leave them at 44 Senate seats. Several of those seats would likely be filled by the sort of moderate Republicans who got wiped out in 2006 and 2008. Both Mike Castle and Mark Kirk, the Republicans who are favoured to run in Delaware and Illinois, voted for the Democrats' cap-and-trade bill. The party's candidates in Florida and New Hampshire are more moderate than the incumbents they'd be replacing.
If the party nabbed seats in Arkansas and Connecticut it would move the Senate to the right, but incrementally so. The Senate of 2011 would be a pundit's dream—half a dozen moderate Republicans working across the aisle with moderate Democrats—and a progressive's nightmare.
2 hours ago
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