GOP's Shrinking Minority Status Causing Top Recruits To Decline Runs?

Today, former Gov. Tom Ridge (R-PA) announced that he will not run for the Senate next year. The decision dramatically increases the chances that Democrats will hold that newly-acquired seat since no other potential GOP candidate was anywhere close to Ridge's stature.

Said Ridge:

I am enormously grateful for the confidence my party expressed in me, the encouragement and kindness of my fellow citizens in Pennsylvania and the valuable counsel I received from so many of my party colleagues. The 2010 race has significant implications for my party, and that required thoughtful reflection. All of the above made my decision a difficult and deeply personal conclusion to reach. However, this process also impressed upon me how fortunate I am to have so many friends who volunteered to support my journey if I chose to take it and continue to offer their support after I conveyed to them this morning how I believe I can best serve my commonwealth, my party and my country.

But Ridge was just the latest in a string of prominent Republican recruits to decline runs for the Senate and House next year.

Yesterday, it was reported that Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has declined a bid for President Obama's old Senate seat (currently held by Sen. Roland Burris). Like Ridge, Kirk was clearly the GOP's best candidate in the state. Now, it seems highly unlikely that the GOP will wrest control of the seat away from the Democratic nominee (which is unlikely to be Burris).

Earlier this week, two other top Republicans opted against House bids against vulnerable freshmen Democrats.

First, Florida GOP chair Jim Greer (R) declined to take on freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) in Florida's 24th Congressional District. Then, former Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) declined a rematch against freshman Rep. Glenn Nye (D-VA). Both were huge losses for the NRCC which hoped to narrow the Democrats 79-seat majority.

Be further mindful that top GOP recruits to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) have already declined to run, as did former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) for the open Republican-held Senate seat in Florida (though some GOPers are hopeful that Gov. Charlie Crist (R) will run for the seat, but that is far from certain.).

What's noteworthy about these decisions is that each of these candidates could have won their respect races. But what is clearly outweighing the prospects of simply winning is that of having to serve in an ever-shrinking minority party with little power.

As candidly acknowledged by potential House candidate Bill Konopnicki (R-AZ):

Konopnicki said he isn't interested in serving in Congress unless Republicans take back the majority in the 2010 elections - something that will be difficult to predict in time to mount a serious campaign.

"I'm not interested, quite honestly, in going and being the minority party," he said.

This is a real problem for Republicans and likely to further diminish their numbers in the Senate and House even more as a result of poor recruiting, creating quite the Catch-22 for the GOP in 2012 and beyond.

A very, very ugly dynamic for the GOP indeed.

Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, "GOP's Shrinking Minority Status Causing Top Recruits To Decline Runs?"

Follow Mark Nickolas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mnickolas

Comments

[doodlebug2]

Personally, I do not think the GOP will implode or go away or be irrelvant.
I live in a red county in Virginia, and listening to the people, they seem to want the GOP "brand"
Sorry to say it. If President Obama and the Dems "fail" or the economy tanks or something crappy really happens (fill in the blanks), the Reps will be alive and kicking.
Remember, Goldwater people thought the GOP was doomed and the same after 1968 with the riots at the Dem convention and with the clubbing from Nixon in 1972. Dems seemed irrelevant
It behoves dems to realize that power comes and goes. I am not saying this as a republican spoil sport but as an Independent who voted for Obama who does not want the party (dems) to get to cocky and loose what gains they have,

[JessWonderin]

No smart political figure would "volunteer" to take the lead of this shrinking crowd of political cannibals running the "Base" . . . why destroy yourself NOW? wait a few years when the Republican Moderates form a new party and let the "Republican Brand" go the way of the Whigs and Bull Moose Party . . .

[DRaymond]

The double whammy for a candidate like Ridge is that not only would he spend all of his time in the minority party but, if he ever voted outsided of the party line he would be pilloried as a 'RINO' and threatened with a well-funded opponent in the next primary.

[StJames]

Wow! Konopnicki won't play if he can't be king? or at least prince? What kind of people are these republicans? No wonder the party is in trouble.

[dwright]

Yeah, this guy sounds like the one that will bring the baseball for a pickup game and if someone hits a home-run he picks up the ball and goes home. What a team player!

[Angelaaaa]

It's more than just not wanting to be part of a minority party. Most young, up-and-coming politicians know that getting into a position of power when your party is in a minority is sometimes the only way in at all. When parties lose power, they also tend to lose most of their oldtimers, giving the youngbloods a relatively clean slate. This hasn't happened to the necessary extent this time round. The GOP is still dominated by Cheney, Limbaugh and McCain. If anything, the major flight has occurred among moderate Republicans, leaving an even more skewed party. Whoever takes on a position of prominence is going to be an apologist for an aging bunch of far-right bloodsuckers who just will not lie down and die (or go away). Ridge may be selfish but he obviously isn't stupid.

[neesy08]

Good! If this is true, then it is disheartening to Repubs. They were salavating at the prospect of winning these seats

[slowtono]

They are all setting themselves for the new coming American Party. The party of the people by the people.

[newbridge]

When the GOP former Vice President stands up and says he is "glad the detainees were waterboarded", you are going to lose a lot people. The rightwing doesn't have any place to go. They have lost America with their idiotic rhetoric. And it is about time. These neocons/Bu­sh/Cheney/­Big Bankers are losing badly. I think that most Americans have awakened from a long slumber and finally realize that something was terribly wrong in their lives. I love the fact that the Senate has voted for more scrutiny of the Fed. This is getting better and better, and I am feeling much more hopeful.

I think even the thinking Republicans know this or they would be running for office.

[JohnJames]

Good.

[Tomhere]

Good.
Shut them out!
Shut them up!
Shut them DOWN!

[AGarcia]

Don't get too happy. Oh, wait... darn it.... I got happy. Goo Bye GOP (Notice, I didn't say C-YA later?!)

[Higbyguy]

There's a fascinating dynamic playing out here. For all of us who had to suffer under a conservative ideology that became so twisted that even Goldwater's been doing somersaults in his grave, the present Catch 22 has become quite a satisfying thing to behold. Here is the problem: the Republican party has done such a lousy job of holding on to the Independents and moderates they need to win elections that moderate Republicans like Ridge (and Crist etc.) haven't the will to try to turn the party around from the inside, especially if the only reward is years and years of continuing to sit on the sidelines of Congress as a dramatically reducted minority party, and having to sidle up to the right wing wackos who are apparently calling the shots these days. What level-headed non-ideologue moderate Conservative would want to join hands with the likes of Bachmann and King et al?

And it didn't have to be this way, if the Republicans hadn't been hijacked by their dark side and reduced their tent to the size of a Boy Scout pup tent. Do I feel sorry for them? Coming from a family of moderate Conservatives who now have no place to go, maybe a little...

[BryantG]

Why are republicans playing to thier base anyway? It's not like the evangrelicals, tea-baggers, Fox/Limbaugh crowd, etc are ever going to vote democratic. Playing to the center is a no-lose proposition for the republicans. The base has nowhere to go. It's the same with the dem base.

[stonelaw]

Because it makes too much sense. Thinking that way means you have a brain.

[Grunty1]

In politics, a loss severely damages your chances of being allowed to run again.

This list of decliners are doing nothing but protecting their future election chances.

[DragonMama]

Translation "I don't wanna be there if I might actually have to WORK and INTERACT with people who don't automatically agree with me in a drone-like fashion."

This is why no one really believed Republicans were on a "listening" tour anyway - they may have fully functional hearing according to an audiologist, but listen? Totally different brain function and they all seem pretty drain bramaged in that region.

[jeanrenoir]

There was always only one political issue this year: Can Obama "fix" the economy? The markets clearly think he can. If the recession ends this year, as the market expects it to, then the Republicans truly will be the party of Alf Landon yet again, basically irrelevant to American politics for years, during the triumphant Age of Obama. The Republicans have been the GM of politics. They discovered their formula for demagoguing the white Archie Bunker American mob when George Wallace won Michigan in '68. It worked like a charm until 2006. But like GM, the Republicans got so fat, happy, and lazy--not to mention completely incompetent (Iraq, Katrina, Wall St.'s Madoffing of America) --that it was easy for a brilliant rival like Obama to rip them to shreds, as he is now in the finishing stages of doing. Obama's Toyota to the Republicans' hapless GM, with Fox as GM's pathetic ad agency trying to sell gas guzzlers in a time of national sobriety. Clinton never ever won over the lower-class white men, the Reagan Democrats. Obama's in the process of doing that, simply by saving their economic necks, which trumps the absurdities of Sean, Bill, and Rush any day.

[MrTrolly]

What a magnificient entry! Your comment is spot on. Isn't it sickenening that people have to wait until their universe implodes before they FINALLY realize at last, that we are all in this together?

[leonel]

TWO ADDED REASONS WHY REPUBLICANS MAY BE IN TROUBLE.

Two unmentioned reasons why Republicans may be in worse trouble than expected are that they have not yet apologized for believing in torture and also that they listened to conservative and unrealistic media that led them down.

This means that in running for election they will be asked whether they believe in water boarding or not. If they say "no" they have to repudiate and apologize. If they say "yes" they have to take stand declared illegal by most people, present government, historical practice, and international community.

The second reason is that Republicans are caught in doubt as to what is actual reality. Sounds weird, but they were led by media such as Fox news channels to believe that their conservative ideology is reasonable and all of a sudden it seems very minority view.

[noamjunior]

that second reason is also known as "buying your own BS"