Kyl

According to reports, Senator Jon Kyl, the GOP Senate Whip, will not seek reelection next year. A few quick notes...

You're going to read that Gabrielle Giffords would have been a leading, and quite possibly the overwhelming choice, for the Democratic nomination. That's absolutely true. Had she not been attacked, and had she decided to jump in, she would probably have cleared the field. Presumably, no matter how well her rehab goes, she's not going to be able to make the race. Very sad.

Reid Wilson has speculation on some of the other possible names. Kyl was elected in 1994, so it's been a long time since Arizona had an open Senate seat: expect lots of candidates to at least be interested.

This is the fifth retirement announcement already, which seems like an awful lot to me this early in the cycle, but I don't really know that for a fact. I can say that there were fewer than five retirements in five of the last 15 election cycles, and exactly five in a couple more, so we're already more or less at the median number of retirements for recent Senates. So five at this point must be higher than normal, at least.

Arizona appears to be a lean-Republican state, but it's not out of reach for the Democrats, at least in my view. This retirement helps to balance out yesterday's news from Virginia; in my opinion, Arizona is easier for Democrats than Connecticut is for Republicans. Still, on balance the retirements so far clearly help the GOP.

Jon Kyl and the Incentive for Republican Laziness

I love Matt Yglesias's response to Jon Kyl's suggestion that having the Senate work on December 27 would somehow be an insult to Christians: Yglesias proposes a Jews-only session on Christmas Day.  Although note that Christmas happens to fall on a Saturday this year; I believe Joe Lieberman will only show up and vote on Shabbat if his vote is really necessary. 

Moving to more speculative territory, I tend to believe that Kyl's remark -- and see also Mitch McConnell's remarks on why it's OK for him to support earmarks in the omnibus spending bill even though he both opposes the bill and theoretically opposes earmarks -- show a downside of a compliant partisan press: it makes these people incredibly lazy.  Basically, if Fox News will buy whatever GOP leaders are selling, and Fox News viewers will buy whatever Fox News tells them, why should GOP leaders work hard to devise intelligent justifications for their positions?  Hmmm...that's not quite right; they should do so, in part because not all swing voters are tuned in to Republican partisan media (and yes, that sort of stuff only matters on the margins, but still plenty of elections are won and lost on the margins, and after all they're paying people to come up with this junk)..  But it must be tempting to be lazy, since whatever silly argument you make will show up in full voice on the Hannity program that evening, and after all that's what's on the TV in each Republican Senator's office.

And after all, who's going to come up to Jon Kyl and tell him how stupid a notion this is?

What is interesting is that there does not seem to be a point at which Republicans viewers feel that their leaders are insulting their intelligence.  Or, at least, not enough viewers to force Fox News (and GOP Senators) to come up with at least marginally more plausible arguments.