From NRO’s The Corner:
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W. Va.) tells National Review Online that she will decide on whether to run for the U.S. Senate by early next week…
…Over the weekend, Moore Capito, a five-term incumbent, says she will “look at everything” and will continue to have conversations with GOP leaders in Washington. Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tells C-SPAN that he has reached out to the Mountain State congresswoman. “I think we’ll have a competitive candidate,” he says. “Governor Manchin would have voted for the stimulus. He supported the health care bill. Those are unpopular policies in a state like West Virginia that has about a 35 percent approval rating for the president.”
The “stakes are big,” Moore Capito tells us, with the Obama administration “out of line” with West Virginian values…
That is all very true, but Democrat Governor Manchin is a very conservative Democrat (he’s even pro-life while Moore-Capito is reportedly pro-choice) and he’s tremendously popular with West Virginia voters. Beating him won’t be easy.
On the other hand, he can be beaten. Moore-Capito has shown herself to be a savvy campaigner and is also popular in her corner of West Virginia. West Virgnia, itself, is trending increasingly Republican on the national level and Obama is very unpopular in that State (it went for McCain in 2008).
It would be one of the most hotly contested races of 2010 – I would prefer a more pro-life GOP candidate, but I’ll also have to look further in to Moore-Capito’s position on that…there’s pro-choice and then there’s pro-choice, ya know? Meaning there are those who are just wary of banning abortion and then there are those who are pro-abortion. I’ll have to see where she falls on the scale.
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