According to the National Journal's Hotline On Call, for the time being, Pete Hoekstra is the front-runner for the opportunity to go head-to-head with Debbie Stabenow.  However, there has also been much media hype around Clark Durant, who is being billed as the "outsider challenger" to the "establishment favorite" Hoekstra.  The problem, as Reid Wilson points out, is that several of Durant's higher-profile backers are themselves establishment fixtures.

Additionally, I'm sure that both of the two candidates, as well as their campaign advisors, are aware that the Michigan Tea Party Patriot Network is going to be a major influence (if not the deciding influence) on the outcome of this primary.  Thus, any sensible statewide campaign in Michigan is going to make a point of building as many bridges as possible with the tea party network.  And that is what makes a major development from last weekend a real head-scratcher:

From Politico's Morning Score:

Clark Durant's insurgent campaign for the Republican Senate nomination in Michigan announced over the weekend that Dick Wadhams will be campaign manager.  Wadhams, a seasoned strategist who helped John Thune topple Tom Daschle in 2004, was Colorado Republican Party chairman until earlier this year.  He announced in February that he would not run for reelection and took some parting shots at the tea party, which probably had cost Republicans a shot at winning the Senate and governor's races.  "I have loved being chairman, but I'm tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is," Wadhams told the Denver Post at the time.  Durant is now appealing to tea partiers as he fights with establishment favorite Pete Hoekstra.

So let me see if I get this straight:

• A fella whose last shining moment politically was during the John Engler era in Michigan (which damn near qualifies him as a has-been) gets hauled out of semi-retirement to mount an insurgent, Washington-outsider campaign against a Washington-insider who at least had considerable tea party backing in his gubernatorial run last year.

• In order to successfully accomplish this challenge, the man realizes that he needs to appeal to and attract tea party support, and so brings in as his campaign manager a man whose last appearance on the national political stage was highlighted by him characterizing tea party activists as "... those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying "uniting conservatives" is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state ...," and "... the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is."

From Hotline's Reid Wilson:

Lest anyone not take Durant seriously, Saul Anuzis has helped him bring in a big-time campaign manager: Dick Wadhams.  Wadhams ran Sen. John Thune's, R-S.D., 2004 contest against then-Sen. Tom Daschle, then helmed George Allen's unsuccessful 2006 re-election race in Virginia.  After that race, he headed back to his home state of Colorado to head the state Republican Party (where he backed Anuzis in his bid for Republican National Committee chairman).

Ah, ha; so Saul, whose employment as a paid consultant for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is probably what cost him his shot at the RNC chairmanship earlier this year (and which has also liquidated damn near all support he had amongst the Michigan tea party groups), viewed it as a wise thing to bring in a known tea party hater to help his primary candidate of choice attract the support of tea party organizations in Michigan.

I think that a double facepalm is warranted here.

Look, Mister Durant, I don't have a dog in this hunt just yet (so as to avoid a conflict of interest that would risk compromising the vetting process), at least not publicly.  And, the truth be told, even privately I still haven't made up my mind as to whom of the primary challengers in this race I ought to be recommending to my neighbors.  So what I'm about to say, I say with no hidden agenda:

Saint Paul's advice to the Corinthians is, "Don't fool yourselves.  Bad friends will destroy you." (1 Corinthians 15:33, CEV).  Mister Durant, you and I have never met face-to-face that I can recall, but you seem to be a pretty decent guy from what I've read about you.  If you're honestly trying to run a campaign that attracts tea party groups, then why do you want to hire this guy as your campaign manager?

Outside of the possibility that you really don't care about the tea party movement all that much, except as a means to an end, I don't have an explanation . . . do you?