RedState User Mayhem asks a good question:

Sometimes I find it frustrating that you refrain from telling us *why* you don’t support certain candidates. At times, you just completely ignore covering entire states because no one seems to excite you there (last year you said hardly anything about Rob Portman in Ohio, but, as I recall, you never really gave us a reason for why you didn’t endorse him). I take your analysis seriously, and when you say something, I usually take it to be credible. But just throwing out broad “nobody excites me” statements about Senate races is, frankly, a cop out in my opinion.

I read RedState every day, and I don’t recall reading much on the Missouri, Michigan, or Minnesota Senate races, for example. Could you tell us *why* you don’t like Mark Neumann, or Pete Hoekstra, or Todd Akin the way you like Ted Cruz, Adam Hasner, and Jeff Flake? Give us your real analysis of these candidates, even if you don’t end up endorsing them. Critique them for us, at least, so that we can add your two cents into our own decision making process for next year. Again, just implying that there isn’t anyone exciting in Michigan doesn’t help me very much. That may be the case, but afford us an explanation.

This deserves more consideration than a drive by comment.

First of all, and I don’t mean this to be a cop out, but I do have three jobs and there are a hell of a lot of Senate races. I can’t keep up with them all. Me not writing about a particular race is not a sign of disinterest in the race. More often than not, it means the race is not on my radar. We’re going to support the GOP nominee regardless, so some races can sort themselves out.

There are other races where i think the nominee can push the Senate to the right. Let me be clear here. In my mind it is one thing to push the Senate to the GOP. It is quite another thing to push the Senate to the right. Electing a Republican does not necessarily push the Senate right.

So the races that typically get my interest first are the races where there is a contested Republican primary in a state that will more likely than not elect the Republican in the general election too. In those races, I want to engage and help the conservative so when he gets to Washington he can aid the conservative cause like Mike Lee or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or Pat Toomey — primaries which caught my eye early on.

Mayhem mentions Todd Akin in Missouri and Pete Hoeskstra in Michigan. I’ve just started paying attention to those two races and Wisconsin. But thus far they aren’t part of my focus because while I think in each case the Republican will be vastly better than the Democrat, I don’t get the sense that they right now (A) need my focus or (B) have shown they’ll actually move the Senate markedly to the right if elected.

Again, certainly they’ll move the Senate to the GOP and it will be important to go all in for the general on their behalf, but moving the Senate to the GOP is one thing and moving the Senate right is another. Right now I’m focused on those races that’ll move the Senate to the right.

Stenberg, Hasner, Mandel, Cruz, Flake, and Liljenquist will all be both strong Republican nominees in a general election and move the Senate to the right if elected.

Hope that helps explain my thinking, but I also cannot emphasize enough that often a race you may be very interested in just simply is not on my radar right now. Shoot me an email or do a user diary to get that race on my radar.