Senator John Warner will cease to serve as a Virginia Senator at the end of his current term. He will have served for 30 years in the Senate.
He’s a good example that incumbents are not inherently bad, but that incumbents are even better when they go. Senator John Warner has served our country and the State of Virginia in many different capacities over all the years.
In these times of heavy heavy lobbying, it is important to recognize that times have changed and it is more difficult today for new Senators to remain untouched by the influence of money. I’d posit that if he had gotten off the incumbent stump in 1999 and ran for President in 2000, we might be in a better place as a country today.
Senator Warner recently had a nasty brush up against the Bush Administration and the Pentagon when he called for a partial withdrawal of troops from Iraq by Christmas. His request was shot down rapidly and just a couple weeks later he is now announcing his resignation.
This opens up Virginia for the 2008 election, and it will make it very difficult for Republicans to hold the Senate. Its possible that when Sen. Warner sat down at the poker tables with the Pentagon and the Bush Administration that he went all in on his request for a troop withdrawal and now he is showing that he was not bluffing.
This marks a bad week for the Republican party in the Senate and we’ll cover another Republican Senator, whose days are also being unexpectedly numbered.