If it's Monday morning, it's time for some more RNC Chair-related gossip, and as I sometimes do in these posts, I'll start off by quoting from Politico's Playbook, which today was sent out at 8:11 AM ET. It begins:

Good Monday morning. EXCLUSIVE: On a 7:30 p.m. conference call, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is expected to announce he won’t seek reelection when the committee picks a new chairman at its winter meeting next month. Friends warn that you never know with Steele, but confide that he has sent them the clear signal he’s dropping out. That's based in part on the erosion, in the last week, of votes he had been counting on.

Not to be a pain in the ass, but it's worth noting that this information was available via Fox News and then various users on Twitter as early as... 9-something-PM ET last night. A bit of a let-down to start the morning off-- though I'm sure more information about precisely what Steele will say tonight will come to light throughout the day.

More helpfully, Playbook moves on to report that Norm Coleman is seriously considering jumping into the race, and that Coleman sees his greatest strength as a would-be contender as his fundraising record. That's useful information and interesting, though it raises a couple of questions for me. First, as Minnesota's Chairman, Tony Sutton, was one of the first folks announced as a Reince Priebus supporter, a) will Coleman enter a race where he doesn't have the full support of the entirety of his home-state delegation or b) does Sutton plan to switch his support to Coleman should he announce? Enquiring minds want to know... ...

Joel Connelly has an excellent column at the Seattle P-I today, profiling the two (all-but-certain) contenders to replace soon-to-be outgoing Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire. Here's a long excerpt:

Possible Democratic contender Rep. Jay Inslee is being his bold, bellicose self this week. He is out front in denouncing a "millionaires and billionaires" tax cut compromise negotiated by a Democratic president with whom he may share the ticket in 2012.

Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna is, as usual, covering all the bases and latching onto popular causes. McKenna recently picked Yakima to unveil his latest crusade, declaring: "Yakima is ground zero in the fight against gangs, but these crimes plague every city in the state."

The two likely opponents show where they've come from in setting a path for where they want to go.

McKenna is a onetime University of Washington ASUW president. He embodies an old truism that the student politician of today is the student politician of tomorrow. Inslee is an onetime Ingraham High School quarterback with an urge to throw deep and defy coverage. He's made a specialty of going over the heads of Fox News blonds.

Of course, Gov. Christine Gregoire is of no mind to declare herself a lame duck, not when just elected president of the National Governors Association. She continues to host quiet $1,000-a-plate fund raising dinners at Wild Ginger.

It is, however, time to look at the guys most likely to go for it.

Inslee has represented both sides of the "Cascade Curtain" in Congress. He won a legislative seat from Selah, then in 1992 upset a party-favored candidate in the Democratic primary and Republican Doc Hastings in the general election, and was off to Capitol Hill....

From Politico:

After agreeing to kill earmarks, some of the most conservative GOP lawmakers are already starting to ask themselves: What have we done?

Indeed, many Republicans are now worried that the bridges in their districts won’t be fixed, the tariff relief to the local chemical company isn’t coming and the water systems might not be built without a little direction from Congress.

So some Republicans are discussing exemptions to the earmark ban, allowing transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and water projects. While transportation earmarks are probably the most notorious — think “Bridge to Nowhere” — there is talk about tweaking the very definition of “earmark.”

[...]

Conservatives like Roe, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Iowa Rep. Steve King are among those trying to figure out a longer-term, sustainable way to get money back to projects in their districts.

“This isn’t trying to be too cute by half of what is an earmark and what isn’t,” Bachmann told POLITICO on Wednesday. “But we have to address the issue of how are we going to fund transportation projects across the country?”

[...]

Bachmann says Congress should exempt “roads, bridges and interchanges” and recommends that if a town, city, county or state approves a project, a lawmaker in Washington should be able to submit a request — a practice she says she has followed.
...