So Lieberman's done, Bysiewicz is in, Murphy seems likely, Courtney somewhat less so. What about the Republicans?

Nate Silver thinks it would be bad news for Republicans if Linda McMahon runs for the Senate again, now that Lieberman is retiring. My friend Tony, defender of conservative principles and patron of the World's Greatest Tavern, agrees with Silver.

Here's how Tony put it last night: "Agree with Silver. If I was a big shot GOP donor, doubt I'd invest in CT-Sen after watching a campaign with that much $ flame out."

(He doesn't always write like that. It was a tweet. Don't judge him.)

I see Tony's point, and Silver's. I don't think I buy it, though. If McMahon is thinking about running again for the Senate -- and she's been hinting at it since shortly after losing to Richard Blumenthal last year -- she'll enter the contest with, presumably, the same willingness to hurl a dumbfounding amount of money into her campaign.

More important, though, she'll enter the contest knowing where she succeeded against Blumenthal, and where she failed.

Silver, and perhaps my friend, see McMahon's bum investment as a failed launch. I think it was more like early-stage testing on the Dreamliner: it cost a ton, and it looked pretty shaky, but they're way too far down the track to scrap it now.

Yes, McMahon lost by 12 points to Blumenthal in what was elsewhere a great year for Republicans, despite spending more than five times as much money ($49.9 million to Blumenthal's $8.6 million, if you're counting).

But that analysis ignores several things, foremost the bone marrow scare McMahon put into Blumenthal and the Democratic Party in this state when she was in mid-ascent and her campaign's whirring blades seemed to be tearing down 20 years' worth of trust and goodwill that Blumenthal had amassed. Don't think for a second that Susan Bysiewicz or Chris Murphy or Joe Courtney would happily go under the same knives.

And people who follow these races from afar also likely missed just how good a candidate McMahon was. It was easy to miss. There was the sheer novelty that someone who'd made a mint in the pro wrestling industry was asking voters for the right to vote on treaty ratifications and federal judgeships; for a wide demographic swath of pundits, journalists, political operatives and voters, this was at first such a change from the ways of old as to be unimaginable, and it's one of the reasons that belly-stroking opinion fashioners in both major parties in Connecticut badly misjudged McMahon's potential in the early-going.

But there was skill there, too. With a pair of exceptions that ultimately hurt her, McMahon had pat answers to anticipated questions, and a natural's facility with the mode of speech that political types call being "on-message." **

This is the art of speaking, when being interrogated by the media or unduly curious members of the general public, as if one is not in fact human but instead a second cousin of Julie, the automated Amtrak reservation agent.

One begins the response to any question with phrases like, "Well, I think what the people of Connecticut are most concerned about..." or "We're here to talk about moving Connecticut forward..." or "[chuckle] Really, what we're talking about today is..." This was the mode by which McMahon, helped by her corporate PR department and several years of prior prep, managed to make herself sound more like Goldwyn or Mayer than the conniving heel of a wrestling mogul that her husband plays on TV. She was a purveyor of entertainment, and if you a) didn't like what she sold or b) wanted to know too much about what happened to her workers, then you clearly didn't have much of a sense of humor and she'd ask the viewers of Connecticut television news to join her in having a wry little chuckle at what a bore you were.

This is black belt-level messaging judo. Raise your hand if you think Linda McMahon will somehow be worse at it 18 months from now.

Of course, McMahon's ability to hew so perfectly to the message of the day, and to reveal so little when she opened her mouth, helps us in retrospect see the lie that was Connecticut politics' Year of the Mogul. The rationale for taking seriously McMahon or Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Foley was founded on the mystical powers bestowed by corporate experience.

Balance sheets had brushed their faces and blessed them! In the forge of private enterprise they had been tempered, bestowed with strengths that mere career politicians could not even fathom! They alone had the vision to see clearly the way out of economic recession, and the innate honesty to frankly state the way back to greatness!

This was, of course, nonsense. The skills of the CEO and the skills of the career politician are almost exactly the same. (On Meet the Press and on the shareholder conference call, the art is saying what you want to say, not saying what you don't, and not letting anyone else drive the conversation where you'd prefer it not to go.) The difference, as notorious career politicians like the one Blumenthal and McMahon strove to replace would argue, is that those who have served in the government before have at least some idea of how frustrating and halting progress usually is when you have to consider the rights, opinions, amendments and, ultimately, votes of others. The CEO senator doesn't get to create (or eliminate) jobs by fiat, anymore than the union hack senator does.

Linda McMahon could have created a million jobs; Sen. McMahon would still only have one vote, and be subject to the same stultifying rules that mean even that one vote is put to meaningful use about as regularly as Scott Brown's pickup truck or Foley's barn coat.

Still, the distinction is one that many people fall for, or to put it in a more complimentary light, one that many people believe should have real meaning. Like that of more liberal populists who adopt the role of labor leader marcher/shouters every five and a half years, it's a style, and it sells. And selling style is where McMahon and her family company have proved they have few equals.

The Republicans have options, and more of a bench than they seemed to a few years ago. Rob Simmons. Foley. Former U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

But anyone who thinks McMahon can't make another, more competitive run for the Senate this time around hasn't been paying enough attention to her storylines. There's always another comeback.

** This blew up on McMahon twice. Once it was a fireburst: her disastrous attempt to cobble together in media res a "business friendly" position on the state minimum wage, a figure whose importance to real people she badly misjudged, and which she couldn't identify anyway. The other was a long, slow, discrediting burn: the laughable refusal to take a position on Social Security and Medicare while professing to care deeply about budget deficits. But she'll have pat answers to both if she runs again, and will not offer that chink in the armor to Democrats next time.