Mitch Turtles Up

How terrified is Mitch McConnell right now?  Looks like the one-two assault from both the left in Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and the right in GOP primary challenger Matt Bevin has got the Turtle holed up in his shell and calling for reinforcements.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chief of staff is stepping down from his position to focus exclusively on the GOP leader’s reelection campaign and the national Republican effort to take back the majority next year.

The move, Republicans say, is a reflection of the growing belief — and concern — that 2014 could be the last opportunity in years for the GOP to recapture the Senate after blowing their chance at the majority in the past two election cycles. So McConnell is moving a key aide out of his official Washington office to work entirely on campaign politics.

Josh Holmes, who has run McConnell’s personal office handling Kentucky-centric issues since December 2010, will now work in a dual role as a senior political hand to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and to help advise the GOP leader’s difficult reelection bid in Kentucky. In his new NRSC role, Holmes will work as a conduit to the downtown fundraising community as the GOP seeks to keep pace with Democratic fundraising.

Holmes’s departure comes as two other senior leadership aides have announced they are leaving the Senate, albeit for different reasons. Dave Schiappa, who serves as McConnell’s floor general and is perhaps the most important Senate Republican staffer, is leaving the chamber after nearly three decades of work to take a job as vice president at the Duberstein Group, a downtown lobbying firm. And Rohit Kumar, a top policy aide to the leader who helped negotiate key deals including the fiscal cliff accord, is also stepping down for personal reasons.

When your senior staff is running for the hills and scrambling for lobbyist jobs this early in the cycle, something is badly, badly wrong.  It's even worse when your senior staff is heading over to run the party Senate campaign machine so they can funnel as much cash and other resources as possible to stave off the very real possibility of defeat of the party's Senate leader.

The fact that all of this is happening with nine months and change before the May primary is a really, really big hint that priority one is saving Mitch's turtle ass in 2014.  Yes, Republicans are very, very worried.

They should be.