From the Concord Monitor:

If you take a national view, things don’t look too good for the Republican Party these days. John Ensign, a serious senator who thought he might be president, resigned his leadership position last month after admitting to an extramarital affair. Mark Sanford, a governor who also aspired to be president, is suddenly best known for a kooky personal soap opera involving an Argentinean mistress. And the Sanford drama was knocked off the cable news gab-fests by the even more bizarre news from up north, where Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced she was leaving office before her term was up – with no cogent explanation.

Yet here at home, all is not lost for the GOP. If partisans were dismayed last week by the announcement by John E. Sununu that he would not run for the U.S. Senate in 2010, the news strangely underscored the fact that the Republicans are not wholly without resources. Yes, they’ve fared extraordinarily poorly in the past two elections, but the plethora of candidates and near-candidates who have made their names known in the days since Sununu bowed out might suggest a renaissance of sorts.

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