Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: As Cardon flakes out, Flake goes Seventeenther

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' AZ-Sen: What's the point, really? Businessman Wil Cardon clearly gave up the ghost when he went dark on TV four weeks before Arizona's GOP primary, then spent days denying he was giving up. Now, in a move that will do absolutely nothing to either quiet naysayers or help his chances, his campaign made a token $52K cable buy stretching over two weeks. As the Arizona Republic points out: "At the height of the campaign, Cardon made weekly ad buys in the $300,000 range and spent nearly $1 million just in July."

Meanwhile, is this new? It's easy to lose track of which Republican Senate candidates have gone Seventeenther'you know, advocating the repeal of the 17th amendment to the Constitution, the one that provided for direct election of United States Senators. For a typically obscure set of reasons, this has long been a hobby horse of the conservative movement, but unlike, say, getting rid of the 16th amendment (income tax), it's less clear why the idea of having state legislatures pick senators has such appeal for the tea party set. Yet GOP Rep. Jeff Flake recently told a gathering of party activists that he's on board with the idea. I doubt it'll come up as a campaign trail issue, but it just goes to show you how non-mainstream Flake really is.