HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?
Doomsday for Congress' 'old bulls'
06/07/2010 -
Editor's note: Ed Rollins, a senior political contributor for CNN, is senior presidential fellow at the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. He was White House political director for President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
New York (CNN) -- There is a term used widely on Capitol Hill, and it needs no explanation to the tens of thousands who work there serving the House and Senate. The term is "old bulls," and it is used to describe the most senior members of Congress.
Unlike in the farm pasture, where younger and stronger bulls sometimes push the old guys off to the sidelines, the old bulls in Congress usually get stronger and seldom get challenged either for re-election or their chairmanships or ranking positions on committees.
All that is changing. The pending election of 2010 may be a doomsday election that already is causing a giant reshuffling of the old guard. In the last few days, one longtime respected senator, Robert Bennett, was denied renomination by Republican convention delegates in Utah. Yesterday in West Virginia, after 14 terms, Democratic Rep. Alan Mollohan was crushed by Democratic voters in his bid for renomination.
You add that to the 37 House members who are retiring or running for other office, and now 10 Senate seats where the incumbent is not running again, and there will be a lot of new faces roaming the Capitol after November.
And add to that the probable defeat of a 30-year veteran senator -- Republican turncoat and now Democrat Arlen Specter -- in the Democratic primary next Tuesday, and you can see that seniority means little to voters. Many formerly safe incumbents will be running for their lives.
The idea that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, now running behind three potential Republican opponents in Nevada (primary June 8) could be the second majority leader defeated in the last six years (the first was Tom Daschle) is unsettling to say the least.
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