Bunning insists he's not Blagojevich

Hall of Fame pitcher and Senator Jim Bunning insists that he's running for re-election to the Senate.

A defiant Sen. Jim Bunning insisted today that he is running for a third term in 2010.

The Republican said he is hiring campaign staffers, scheduling fundraisers and planning a February poll in which he expects to do well.

But it also is clear that the relationship between Bunning and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is strained.

McConnell last Friday told the National Press Club that he did not want to speculate about the 2010 Senate race in Kentucky until Bunning made his intentions known.

"I'd like to correct a misunderstanding on this," Bunning told reporters in a conference call today. "I had an hour-long meeting with Sen. McConnell in the first week of December in 2008, and we thoroughly discussed my candidacy for the Senate in that hour meeting in my office in Northern Kentucky -- and gave him every indication that I was going to run again."

"So he either had a lapse of memory or something when speaking to the Press Club last week when he said that he didn't know what my intentions were. He knew very well what my intentions were," Bunning said.

Asked if he felt he was getting the "Fletcher treatment" from McConnell, a reference to the Senate GOP leader's silence on Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher's candidacy for re-election in 2007, Bunning answered: "If that's what you consider the Fletcher treatment, I guess that's what I'm getting."

Okay, so Blago has nothing to do with this post whatsoever but I'll tell you this: Blago is WORSE than Fletcher, Bunning, and McConnell combined!