Lingle for Hawaii

[redcommander]

I think the best news out of this is that Hawaii Republicans have a chance of gaining some seats back in the state legislature with her at the top of the ticket. If a no name was the nominee, Democrats would have an excellent chance of controlling 100% of the State Senate seats (The Republican caucus is at a rump of 1 senator now). That's not good for democracy.

[redcommander]

I think the best news out of this is that Hawaii Republicans have a chance of gaining some seats back in the state legislature with her at the top of the ticket. If a no name was the nominee, Democrats would have an excellent chance of controlling 100% of the State Senate seats (The Republican caucus is at a rump of 1 senator now). That's not good for democracy.

Agree. But Lingle's victory itself doesn't looks too likely to me. If only anainst Ed Case, who is hated by many Democrats...

Perhaps he will ruin another election for Democrats there. Although I don't think he has the guts to run as a write-in if he loses the primary.

[redcommander]

Let's say hypothetically Obama's margin goes down a little bit from 08 because of the economy to a high 60 win in Hawaii. Would Lingle even be able to win enough cross-over supporters to win?

[redcommander]

Not really sure why she's bothering. I mean, kudos to her for providing something arguably more substantial than token opposition, but there's still no realistic chance of her winning. If I was Lingle I'd just go into lobbying or whatever it is ex-politicians do with their time.

Perhaps they offered her something behind closed doors in exchange for running.  Or maybe she is just being a good soldier and taking one for the team.  I would agree that Lingle has a snowball in Hawaii chance of winning.

For the GOP this is a positive development, even though a loss is a virtual certainty.  As a former governor, Lingle will be able to fundraise fine on her own.  And symbolically, the Hawaii GOP is not embarrassing itself by putting up a non-entity U.S. Senate candidate.  Which is more than the WA GOP can say, lol.

Well Baumgartner is a million times better than Dino Rossi, so it's at least a slight step up for them.

[redcommander]

I'm not sure why Cook automatically jumped the gun and made the race a Toss Up. Perhaps he has some internal polling that we don't know about.