The Other Joe

By Baxter

We cats have refrained from all the 2016 speculation because it's silly. Goodness gracious, we're still trying to recover from our campaign exertions in 2012. But since the gun reform kerfuffles have engulfed Capitol Hill, we had a thought about West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

Because somewhere in Washington, a Republican political consultant is tied up in knots over the prospect of a Clinton-Manchin ticket in '16. Yes, even though Manchin-Toomey failed. Perhaps because it failed.

And it's pretty amazing that a West Virginian who has shot guns in campaign ads and who remains coy about who he voted for in 2012 could strike fear in the GOP's heart. But he could. Here's how.

First, let's assume that Hillary Rodham Clinton runs and gets the nomination. You'd have to figure that she would have a good chance to hold all the states President Obama won — and that by herself, she probably puts states like North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana in play. (Changing voter demographics alone likely put states like Georgia and Arizona in play, too.)

Add a country boy like Manchin to the ticket, and the Republicans could lose the spine of Appalachia — one of the last remaining, reliably red areas they've got.

Finally, gun reform and Manchin's attempted compromise not only gains him cred with worried moms, dads and grandparents across America, it also probably helps insulate him from objections by other Democratic constituencies — regardless of how he votes on other issues of concern to the base.

We cats realize there are a lot of "ifs" here, and we're not saying that any of this is going to happen. But it's worth having the Republicans lose sleep over it, right?

P.S. We cats are bullish on the gun issue. Why, just today we learned that GE Capital, General Electric's financial arm, has decided to stop lending to gun shops. We cats think this is pretty big. After all, GE is one of the nation's biggest defense contractors, so the company has many conservative friends. So the issue is alive and well — unlike those 20 kids and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary. Stay tuned.