McConnell: I’ll Bring Home The Pork

This argument sometimes works (see Tim Johnson in 2002) but it’s a real desperation strategy, something incumbent Senators only break out because they fear they’re in imminent danger of losing and don’t have much to say on their own behalf:

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Kentucky voters would make a terrible trade if they replaced him with a Democrat lacking the clout to deliver huge amounts of federal money he took credit for bringing back to the Bluegrass state. [...] McConnell, facing a hard-charging challenge from Democratic businessman Bruce Lunsford, did not mention the nation’s sagging economy or his recent vote for a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry during a speech to the chamber of commerce in this Appalachian city.

One wonders if this is even true. It certainly is true that as GOP leader, McConnell has had a ton of clout and has brought a lot of pork home. But as leader of substantially reduced minority, would he really continue to have all that much clout? Indeed, it doesn’t seem obvious to me that McConnell would even be able to hold on as leader if, as seems probably, the Republicans lose seven or eight Senate seats. It’s McConnell, after all, who was architect of the unorthodox notion that Senate Republicans should respond to losing their majority in 2006 by launching a lot of filibusters in defense of the unpopular incumbent president’s agenda.