Sunday clips

Sunday clips

Still no government in the UK, so I'll focus back home.

I briefly noted in the midst of Thursday night's anglophilia that the new KCCI poll (conducted by Research 2000, which also polls for Daily Kos) has Roxanne Conlin only nine points behind Chuck Grassley. Conlin blogs on Kos to play this up.

New Iowa blog The Gold Dome asks why no one's polled the GOP governor primary.

Distubing development in Utah as very conservative Sen. Robert Bennett loses re-nomination for the sin of trying to govern, or even pretending to try to govern (he was one of the group, along with Grassley, who sat down with the Dems to stall, I mean negotiate, on health care.)

Part of the loss is a convention-based nomination system. Bennett might have had a tough time in a primary but would have had a fighting chance. Grassley is really, really lucky they didn't come after him, too. Maybe he was smart enough to see that, and "pull the plug on grandma" was a pre-emptive strike. That saved him his re-nomination, but cost him his brand and earned him a serious general election opponent instead of the usual token challenge he had at the time.

As for Bennett, he still has a shot at a write-in nomination, but he can't do a Lieberman because the independent filing deadline has passed.

Meanwhile in Pennsyslvania, another guy the tea partiers forced out, newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter, could lose in his new party, as new polls show the real Dem, Rep. Joe Sestak, now pulling four points ahead. It's what the insiders told us all along: look for Sestak to make his move late.