I agree with Feingold out of the race, we don't need Tommy Thompson as the nominee to beat the RAT (and it increasingly seems certain that Tammy Baldwin will be the RAT candidate). Politics1.com doesn't even list Thompson as an announced candidate though (his name isn't bolded). The three names listed are Jeff Fitzgerald, Mark Neumann, and John Schiess. I'll have to look into all of them when I have time. Primaries won't be for a while.
Haven't endorsed Ted Cruz in Texas either... some of his endorsements are troubling like Ron Paul and George P. Bush (if the Bush family likes Cruz, that's a bad sign, especially George P. who is to the left of both his dad and uncle!) There seem to be a wide range of choices here: Glenn Addison, Andrew "Cas" Castanuela, Curt Cleaver, Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, Mike George, Elizabeth Ames Jones, Nick Latham, Tom Leppert, Lela Pittenger, and David Smith. Though likely it will come down to Dewhurst or Cruz at this point.
Florida's another one where I'm taking a wait and see... seems some conservative have already jumped on the Adam Hasner express. But again, looks like a big field... Akinyemi Agbede, Vern Buchanan, Bill Fisher Jr.,Adam Hasner, Alexander Ilnyckyj, Josue LaRose, George LeMieux, Deon Long, Mike McCalister, Ron McNeil, Craig Miller, Mirand Sharma, and Marielena Stuart. I've always liked Buchanan in Florida(Vern, not Pat!). LeMieux is a former U.S. Senator who had a pretty decent record but the fact he was appointed to the job by the orange menace (Charlie Crist) might doom his chances of being elected in his own right. But I think it's good he took the job and erased memories of Martinez.
Ted Cruz has been endorsed by a whole slew of conservatives; Ron Paul and George P. Bush are not exactly a cross-section of his supporters. I think Cruz is the real deal, and, if elected, that he would become a force to be reconned with in the Senate Judiciary Committe before eventually being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Florida, I like Hasner better than the others. I’m thinking not only of conservative bona fides (which Hasner has in spades), but also the ability to defeat Bill Nelson. I think that Hasner can energize conservatives while simultaneously holding down Nelson’s margins in the Gold Coast, which would provide a real path to victory. Nothing against Buchanan, but I’m not sure that someone who barely beat a liberal woman (by like 500 votes) in 2006 in a Sarasota-based congressional district that is like 5% more Republican than the rest of the state would be as strong a general-election candidate as Hasner. (Actually, my ideal candidate would be conservative firebrand Congressman Allen West, who is very skillful at framing conservative positions in a way that is acceptable to Gold Coast denizens and who could easily raise the money needed to defeat Nelson; I would love for West to run for the Senate and for Hasner to switch to the race in the congressional district that West would abandon.) As for LeMieux, it’s not just that he was appointed to the Senate by the execrable Crist (who I’m sure made some good appointments, just like Ron Paul and George P. Bush sometimes make good endorsements), it’s that LeMieux was Crist’s right-hand man and enabler for years, and I can’t trust him even if his Senate voting record for a year or so wasn’t that bad.