February 26, 2014 03:49 PM UTC

(STILL BREAKING): How Does Cory Gardner for Senate Make Any Sense At All?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Okay, so let's get this straight…The Republican Party is going to defeat Sen. Mark Udall with Rep. Cory Gardner? The GOP thinks their best chance in 2014 is running an anti-incumbent message through an incumbent member of Congress — which is now the most disliked group of individuals in the history of public polling?

Huh?!?

The current crop of Republican candidates for Senate is, in a word, terrible. All of the candidates have massive flaws, from publicly backing Personhood to supporting the government shutdown. All of the candidates are unappealing to women and Hispanic voters. All of the candidates are from outside the Denver Metro Area — which is where the most voters are concentrated…

…BUT SO IS CORY GARDNER!!!

Consider this list and where Gardner ends up: You can put a checkmark next to his name and every one of these problematic issues for Republicans in 2014:

The point here isn't to just list the problems with a Cory Gardner campaign for U.S. Senate. The point is to show that there is no major issue where Cory Gardner is any different or better for Republicans in 2014 than any of the existing GOP Senate candidates. Different body, same head (or is it the other way around?)

In fact, you could make an argument that Gardner is potentially worse than the current crop of candidates because: a) his candidacy was born in a smoke-filled backroom in Washington D.C., which nobody ever likes, b) he makes it harder to run an anti-incumbent message against Udall, and c) he's been in the news recently for high-profile Congressional junkets.

We understand that Gardner will probably be a much better fundraiser than any of the current candidates (though it would be hard to do worse when 2014 Republicans have been HISTORICALLY bad), but how is he anything more than a younger version of Ken Buck? (and we mean the 2014 version of Buck, not even the 2010 model).