MORNING READ

by Walter Alarkon - 05/14/08 9:36 AM ET

Democrat Travis Childers’s victory in a conservative Mississippi House district Tuesday has removed any doubt among bloggers that Republicans are in trouble this year. Hillary Clinton’s easy victory in Tuesday’s other race, the West Virginia primary, may have little meaning to some liberal bloggers, but it suggests to conservatives that Barack Obama is weak. And John McCain’s new green merchandise line has those on the right cringing.

Childers and Democrats have no business winning in a district President Bush carried by 25 percentage points in 2004, writes The Plank’s Josh Patashnik. The Republican brand is in such bad shape that Democrats virtually anywhere can run candidates who seem to share positions with GOP candidates and win, according to Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff. And if Republican leaders in Congress don’t do something quickly, their party is headed for another round of epic losses, writes Pejman Yousefzadeh at RedState.

Both Mirengoff and Yousefzadeh acknowledge that McCain, running in this poisoned atmosphere for Republicans, faces an uphill battle against Obama. But the Arizona Republican can take solace in Obama’s 41-percentage-point loss in West Virginia, which is more evidence that Obama is the weaker general election candidate than Clinton, according to RedState’s Erick Erickson. Clinton and her campaign are using her lopsided win to make her case to be on the ticket in November, writes MyDD’s Todd Beeton. The Plank’s Patashnik writes that Obama is lucky that Clinton stuck around at least for this week; Tuesday’s results, in which former candidate John Edwards picked up 7 percent of the vote, show that Obama likely would have lost West Virginia to candidates not running if Clinton had dropped out, according to the blogger.

Conservatives bloggers save some of their fire for McCain’s climate change speech, in which the Republican accepts that man helped cause global warming. Perhaps McCain, instead of preparing for the Oval Office, can run an honorable campaign loved by the media that results in an offer to become the Secretary of the Interior in the new administration, writes The Corner’s Andy McCarthy. McCain may be trying to show himself to be more enlightened than the average Republican, but he’s also giving conservatives an excuse to blame him if he loses in November, according to Scott Johnson at Power Line.

The personalities of Capitol Hill’s most powerful players also get some press. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the subject of a recent glowing New York Times profile, is lauded by one Republican for single-handedly raising the public discourse in a post by The Plank’s Eve Fairbanks. And Swampland’s Ana Marie Cox deconstructs senators’ responses to the question of whether they would accept an offer to become a vice presidential nominee, which appeared in The Hill. According to Cox, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) showed the most interest in becoming a running mate, while Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) showed the least.

FROM THE BLOGS:
Republican Losing Streak Continues – Paul Mirengoff, Power Line
GOP Has Serious Problems With Brand ID – P. Yousefzadeh, RedState
Rebranding Republicans – Robert Borosage, Huffington Post
MS-01: Voters Don’t Care About Wright – kos, Daily Kos
In West Virginia, Obama Still Can’t Win – Erick Erickson, RedState
A Thought About West Virginia – Josh Patashnik, The Plank
Why Doesn’t She Concede? – Thomas B. Edsall, Huffington Post
Next Moves For Team Obama – Chris Cillizza, The Fix
Consistency Is Not Required – John Hinderaker, Power Line
‘Green McCain Onesie W/ Recycle Logo’!! – A. McCarthy, The Corner
Looking Across The Pond? – Andrew Stuttaford, The Corner
More Praise For Barney Frank – Eve Fairbanks, The Plank
VP Responses: “Big house, big car…” – A.M. Cox, Swampland