GOP Congressman, who pressured his patient & mistress to abortion, is...

[memphis]

As much as I would love a new (D) Congressman from my homestate, it would make no sense for a Republican to dump him in the general just for being a bad person. Smart people vote on policy. Especially in the House where there are so many members, personality makes no difference.

[memphis]

As much as I would love a new (D) Congressman from my homestate, it would make no sense for a Republican to dump him in the general just for being a bad person. Smart people vote on policy. Especially in the House where there are so many members, personality makes no difference.

You don't think a very basic standard of ethics is a prerequisite to holding a public position?

Or at the very least, holding yourself to the same standards you want to use the letter of the law to impose on others?

We choose members of Congress to vote for us in Washington. If a member is a nice person, that's great, and it's a factor in a primary election, where there's often not a lot a real difference between candidates,  but at the end of the day, it's not all that important to the job. I certainly wouldn't support a candidate whose views are different than mine just to make some statement. This is not about who gets to be Prom King. It's about whose vision for America is best.

[memphis]

Who is running against him?

The district is R+18, so no chance he loses the general.

It had a Blue Dog in the seat until 2010, though they may have changed the boundaries since then.

The old TN-4 was mostly rural and drawn by the old TN legislature to be as Democratic as possible. Since then, rural people have become substantially less willing to consider a Blue Dog and the Republican legislature redrew the boundaries to be much more of a suburban district, whose voters (wisely) vote more on policy than an entrenched good old boy network. Tom Delay's district elected a Democratic reprrsentative after a scandal, so I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's extremely unlikely.

[memphis]

Unfortunately you can't expect primary voters to actually bother figuring out who their candidates are. For some reason Tennessee seems to have a worse problem than the nation as a whole with this. But it's bad everywhere. Other than the Atlas types no one has a clue who their primary/lower level office candidates are.

This is not an Alvin Greene situation. He's the incumbent.