A second look before he leaps?

Well, we can’t count Eric Wargotz out can we?

In a move which both piques interest and certainly cheers a certain segment of the Maryland Republican Party, the aforenentioned 2010 GOP Senate candidate is reportedly taking a “second look” at the race, according to the Baltimore Sun and other blog reports. As examples, David Moon at Maryland Juice has the port side view on this while Richard Cross, who briefly worked with the 2010 Wargotz effort, also weighs in at Cross Purposes.

Obviously, this could be much ado about nothing. For one thing, there are only four days before the filing deadline, and while Eric likely has a portion of his team in place and certainly hasn’t closed out his campaign accounts from 2010 he’s already facing a field with some established frontrunners and an uphill battle to secure the same proportion of the primary vote he received two years ago.

But it appears Eric’s logic regarding a primary battle is sound to a certain extent – obviously Ben Cardin has a serious opponent. Yet on the other hand, it appears the Maryland Democratic Party is going all in for Cardin despite their own bylaws prohibiting the practice. While our state is perceived as a safely Democratic state, anything is possible and Democrats have to protect the seats they have in the Senate, bylaws be damned.

And there’s always the “testing the waters” theory: perhaps this trial balloon has been launched to see what sort of buzz is generated by the possibility of a late Wargotz entry. Obviously it’s enough to make me write something during an NFL playoff game, and perhaps there is a chance that disillusioned minority Democrats here in Maryland – who will surely turn out to vote for Barack Obama – make that vote and then cast a ballot for the Republican to punish Ben Cardin for running against one of their own. But I only see that as adding 2 to 5 percent to the total of the eventual GOP nominee, and whoever runs needs to make up the 10-point deficit Michael Steele had in the 2006 race.

Certainly Eric is free to toss his hat into the ring, as I always think the more primary choices I have the better. But no one is going to hand him the GOP nomination and many of the factors which led him to initially skip the 2012 contest will remain in place regardless of how the Democratic race goes. My thinking at the moment is that C. Anthony Muse has a steep climb in order to beat Ben Cardin, even without the state and national Democrats putting their thumbs on the scale. Sometimes the first gut instinct is the best one.