Inappropriate Content: Country Roads

The Republican Senate Campaign Committee has launched their first attack ads on Senator Robert Byrd. No surprises; we've known this race is going to be big since June at the very latest. But there was something worth noting in this article from the Charleston Daily Mail:

One political analyst said the ad buy was a relatively small one that wouldn't be enough to bombard voters with the message. And Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the "Cook Political Report" said she believes the short clip is intended less as a jab at Byrd than an indirect way to prod U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., to run against him.

"This ad was designed to put subtle pressure on her. It's not a big enough buy to be directed at voters and it's soft enough in tone not to move Byrd," Duffy said.

Byrd has yet to announce that he is running for an eighth term in 2006, and Capito hasn't decided if she'll launch a campaign against him.

Perhaps the national GOP is having trouble getting Capito to commit. She knows that Byrd will be extremely difficult to beat, and she knows what'll happen if she waits until Byrd finally kicks it. (If he makes it to 2007, Byrd'll have served longer than Good Ol' Strom.) The state will get a little farther along on it's swing rightwards, and the Dems really don't have anyone with the charisma to replace Byrd—in fact, once Byrd dies, Capito will be the penultimate figure in the entire state, second only to Senator Jay Rockefeller (or former West Virginian Jennifer Garner, depending who you ask). It wouldn't be an election, it would be a coronation.

Running now puts that at risk.

The bad news for her is, the national party has decided that Byrd is a prime target for 2006: West Virginia went for Bush last year, despite the efforts of yours truly, and the old Democratic machine propped up by the coal miners union is on it's last legs. Further, Byrd has been one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war and the Bush presidency. He's the GOP's Rick Santorum, and they are going to sink a lot of money into this race.

The bad news for the GOP is, to win, they need Shelley Moore Capito. Her father is former governor Arch Moore, who ran the only GOP campaign that has got within four percentage points of a senate seat since 1960. She is the only Republican elected to federal office from West Virginia, she's chair of the congressional women's caucus, she's the wonder child.

Hence the pressure to get her into the race. We'll see which way she jumps.