Kirk has an appealing personality, has been a good congressman for his district, and is popular with his mostly moderate constituents. It will be difficult/impossible to paint him as a Bush-style irresponsible reactionary. His past two general election opponents tried to do that in ‘06 and ‘08, when Kirk’s support for the Iraq war was a much more salient issue, and both lost. Not that he’s likely to fare as well against Giannoulias in a statewide general election but, again, that’s more because the GOP is unpopular and getting more unpopular in Illinois, not because Kirk has any hidden or under-appreciated weaknesses as a candidate.

As far as how damaging that clip of Kirk talking about his budget discussions with the Chinese will be… here’s where my terrible skills as a political prognosticator should be taken into account. I just don’t see it being that big of a deal, for a few reasons: (1) He can easily spin it, unless there’s more to that clip and/or his public statements, as “Hey, I wasn’t saying anyone in the US government was lying, I was just saying ‘don’t believe these numbers, because everyone in Washington knows they’ll end up changing in the future”; (2) He can probably get away with saying (1) because his analysis of the stated and actual budget numbers will probably turn out to be true; (3) The question of whether Mark Kirk will end up conducting a renegade one-man foreign policy that will damage the credibility of the US government will not be an issue that Illinois voters will care about; (4) The clip itself is boring–Kirk’s droning on about how health care will impact the government’s bottom line, blah, blah, blah, and his demeanor doesn’t reinforce any sort of “this guy’s prone to flying off the handle” narrative.

All that said, if the clip can be successfully spun in a way that portrays Kirk as reckless/ignorant in a more general way I could see it hurting him. But these kinds of things usually have to dramatize some greater truth (or widely-held misperception) about the candidate (e.g., Kerry’s “…before I voted against it”; McCain’s “100 years in Iraq”) to do any real damage.

That was my point. All this hand-picking of moderates is an outrage that should be decried and not just accepted. All these angry TEA Partying conservatives need to stand up to this bullying by the party.