GOP Senator in Trouble in Utah

Bob Bennett (UT) is one of the most liberal GOP senators in Congress, which is hard to believe since he comes from one of the most conservative states.  However, somehow he's managed to hang on to the job for three terms, but that may be about to end:

Unless Sen. Bob Bennett's political fortunes change dramatically in the next two weeks, he could become Utah's first incumbent U.S. senator to lose his party's nomination in seven decades.

A new Salt Lake Tribune poll of Republican delegates shows Bennett running in third, behind GOP challengers Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater.

Lee logged 37 percent support in the survey, while Bridgewater came in at 20 percent, and Bennett lagged at 16 percent.

The survey of 400 Republican delegates, with a 4.4 percent margin of error, was conducted April 22-25 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C. It comes less than two weeks before the May 8 state GOP convention.

"Bennett has almost no shot of getting more votes at the convention than Bridgewater and Lee," Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon, said Monday.

And in a Republican race where only two can survive, that would spell the end for the three-term senator.

While getting a more conservative senator would certainly be a good thing starting in 2011, it could make for a dangerous 2010. A jilted Bennett will have no reason to vote with his party and will be free to join all the craziness being proposed by the Democrats. I'm not saying the Utah GOP should keep him, it's just a reality that once he's free from the electoral threat he'll become a bigger threat to freedom.