Nothing will pull Republicans from their post-election funk and fog faster than renewed hopes of winning control of the U.S. Senate in 2014. Sure, they were confident they would do so last year, only to lose more ground to the Democrats, who now control the upper chamber, 55-45. Yet Republicans see turning six seats in the midterm elections as doable, in that competitive races are forecast for nine now held by Democrats, seven of them in states won by Mitt Romney. At the top of the GOP hit list, once again, is Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who is seeking her fourth term in a state where Romney thumped the president 58% to 41%. Ousting her, however, appears to be a chancier proposition than seemed only a year ago. That’s confirmed by a recent poll from Public Policy Polling, albeit considered a left-leaning group, that shows the senator handily beating seven leading Republicans matched up against her, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, whom she bests 49% to 41%. Any fortune-teller who would have conjured up such a number a year ago would have been laughed out of Jackson Square. That it’s not preposterous now probably has more to do with the recent decline in Jindal’s approval ratings, which sagged into negative territory, both in the PPP poll and another commissioned by the State Medical Society. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
