John Loughlin, candidate for RI-01 (Patrick Kennedy’s seat). His website is here:

We have more on the way from CPAC.

Moe Lane

PS: Crossposted to Moe Lane.

That’s the word that’s going down on the street:

A Democratic official says Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election for his seat representing Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress.

The official spoke to The Associated Press only on the condition that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak ahead of the official announcement.

[snip]

Patrick Kennedy has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse since crashing his car outside the U.S Capitol in 2006.

Interesting that the Kennedy name is no longer sufficient to protect its holders from premature leaks like this.  Also interesting that this is happening; then again, his numbers were abysmal.  They were so abysmal that GOP challenger John Loughlin might even be disappointed about this, although… no, I doubt it.

More here: apparently, Kennedy felt the need to take his life in a ‘different direction.’  I would be cruel about my suggestions of where that different direction might end up going - but I just noticed something about this video I did a while back:

The Democrats are starting to run out of sitting Congressmen featured in it who’ll still be sitting Congressmen, starting next January.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

(H/T: Hot Air & JammieWearingFool) A lot of the focus of this article is on the abysmal performance of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) in it - when asked if he deserved re-election, only 35% of his constituents said ‘yes’; 28% said ‘no,’ and 31% asked ‘what are our options?’ - and we’ll get back to it (and John Loughlin, who’s running for the job) in a moment.  But I would like to highlight these two paragraphs about Sheldon Whitehouse:

Just 33 percent approved of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s job performance, down 11 points from a mid-December Brown University poll.

Fleming said a factor may have been the senator’s controversial December statement that floor opponents of health-care reform were fueled by fanatics, “right-wing militia” and Aryan support groups that hate President Obama.

The NRSC would be well-advised to start atoning for its error in 2006 by finding an acceptable candidate to oppose this fellow in 2012.  And by ‘acceptable’ I don’t mean ‘acceptable to the NRSC.’

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