Replacing Roy Blunt

You will recall that Missouri's senior Senator, Roy Blunt, announced recently that he won't be seeking reelection in 2022.

Missouri has shifted to the right in recent years, and Blunt’s retirement creates an opening for a candidate more closely aligned with former President Trump to succeed him. Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R), for instance, has already floated the idea of a run for Blunt’s seat, arguing that his state’s senior senator has been insufficiently loyal to Trump.

[...]

Greitens hammered Blunt in a radio interview last month for “siding with Mitch McConnell,” the Senate Republican leader from Kentucky whose relationship with Trump has frayed in recent months.

[...]

No Republican has officially announced a bid for Blunt’s seat, and there are no clear front-runners. If he decides to make a run for the Senate, Greitens would enter the race with plenty of baggage. He resigned as governor in 2018, less than a year and a half after taking office, in the face of multiple scandals and staring down potential impeachment.

  The Hill

So he's a perfect candidate for the nutso MAGA right.

Other potential GOP hopefuls include Reps. Ann Wagner (Mo.) and Jason Smith (Mo) as well as Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, state Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the son of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who once held Missouri’s other Senate seat.

Let the games begin.

Blunt, 71, has been a fixture in Washington for decades. He served in GOP leadership in the House for years before entering the Senate and rising to become the chamber’s fourth-highest-ranking Republican. He was widely expected to seek reelection in 2022 and even said earlier this year that he was still planning to run for a third term.

Before Trump took total control of the Republican Party even post-presidency.

Winning the Senate race in Missouri is likely to be an uphill battle for Democrats, who have lost nearly every statewide race there over the past decade. They are planning to contest the seat in 2022, though there is not yet a clear favorite to win the nomination.

They better get cracking.

State Sen. Scott Sifton announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination last month and quickly picked up the endorsement of state Auditor Nicole Galloway, the only Democrat currently serving in a statewide elected office. Activist Timothy Shepard has also launched a bid for the Democratic nod.

[...]

Jason Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state who unsuccessfully challenged Blunt in 2016, signaled on Monday that he would not mount another Senate campaign, while former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who lost reelection in 2018 to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), said emphatically that she would “never run for office again.”

And a lot of people are happy to hear it. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.