John Boehner has been more or less an abject failure as House Republican Leader, overseeing the loss of between 50 and 60 seats over the last two cycles and generally being ineffective in marshaling his caucus to do much of anything productive or positive for the American people. But might the House GOP move to pick an even weaker leader? Here's Patrick O'Connor:

GOP Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.) may challenge House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) for the top spot in the Republican Conference, GOP insiders said.

Lungren's office would not comment on Thursday other than to say that he will have an announcement today.

Lungren would be a long shot to defeat Boehner, or win any other leadership post. Lungren served in Congress for a decade starting in 1978 before leaving Capitol Hill to become California attorney general. After eight years in that post, he unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1998. Lungren was then re-elected to the House in 2004.

What do we know about Dan Lungren? O'Connor mentions that Lungren "unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1998." That's an understatement. That fall Lungren pulled in just 38.38 percent of the vote against as the Republican nominee in an open seat election against the not exactly charismatic Democrat Gray Davis. To put that in perspective, that's the worst showing of any major party gubernatorial candidate running in a general election in the state in the last 20 years. To put it in even more perspective, it's the worst showing of a major party gubernatorial candidate running in an open seat general election in the state since Upton Sinclain garnered 37.75 percent of the vote in the 1934 election -- but even then Sinclair could blame at least part of his poor showing on the presence of a Progressive candidate pulling in about 13 percent of the vote.

Lungren's record of weakness doesn't stop there. Just this month, Lungren nearly pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory -- an move usually reserved for Democrats -- when he only narrowly won reelection against a relatively unknown challenger in a district that had tended to lean about 7 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections.

So if that's the direction House Republicans want to go -- someone defined by their own electoral weakness rather than by having shepherded his caucus to defeat in two straight elections --  fine by me.