Republicans perform triage on their shitty Senate candidates

Well, isn’t this interesting:

A political action committee with close ties to U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is launching a massive new ad campaign in Ohio, a clear sign that national Republicans are shifting more toward playing defense in the Buckeye State.

The Senate Leadership Fund is reserving $28 million worth of TV and radio ads that will air statewide, the group announced Thursday. That’s a huge escalation of the roughly $5 million national Republicans have spent in Ohio so far in the race between Republican J.D. Vance and Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan. The ads will start after Labor Day, the unofficial start of the most intense part of a general-election campaign season.

I could tell a story that Ryan could really win this thing — Sherrod Brown won only 4 years ago, Obama carried the state twice, Dobbs plus gerrymandered GOP legislature governing like they’re in Mississippi could scramble the relatively recent realignment again, Republicans running a charisma-free rich venture capitalist dork who wrote a whole book about how poor people in Ohio are all shiftless drug addicts who deserve whatever they get — and goddamn would I like it to be true. Do I think Ryan will win? Nah. But forcing Republicans to spend a lot of money playing defense in a Trump +8 state in what should be favorable national context while they’re reducing spending in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin…that’s a win in itself. If we can knock off Ron Johnson so the GOP can save Peter Thiel’s drool spittoon I’ll sign for that right now.

….Mitch out there ratcheting those expectations down:

MCCONNELL in KY asked for his midterm projections: "I think there's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they're statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome."— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) August 18, 2022