Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Just two days after Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum said he has “no intention<\/a>” of running for president in 2008, the Pennsylvania senator is already hedging<\/a>. Santorum said Wednesday there was a slight possibility he could run and doesn’t want to rule anything out. “There’s a remote chance that that could change, but that’s not my intention,” Santorum told the AP between television rounds to promote his new book. He added that he wanted to “leave this little window open.”<\/p>\n * Speaking of possible presidential aspirants, John McCain has reactivated<\/a> his political action committee, known as Straight Talk America, which will finance McCain’s travel and allow him to contribute to candidates and party committees.<\/p>\n * In Connecticut, Gov. Jodi Rell (R) continues to enjoy a solid lead<\/a> over her likely Dem challenger next year. A new Quinnipiac poll shows Rell leading Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), 49% to 37%.<\/p>\n * In nearby Rhode Island, Gov. Donald Carcieri (R) recanted<\/a> his neutrality in the state’s upcoming Senate race, explaining yesterday that he “completely supports” Sen. Linc Chafee (R). Carcieri had suggested last week that he would not get involved in Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey (R) decided to challenge Chafee in next year’s GOP primary.<\/p>\n * Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) has been a long-time target of House Republicans, including an all-out effort to win his seat in 2004. But after Matheson beat a well-financed Republican by 15 points in a GOP-dominated district last year, state Republicans have found that no one<\/a> wants to even run against Matheson anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Just two days after Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum said he has “no intention” of running for president in 2008, the Pennsylvania senator is already hedging. Santorum said Wednesday there was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}