Is the Republican establishment starting to wonder if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will survive re-election this year?

Christian Whiton, a former State Department adviser under President George W. Bush, predicted he’ll lose his seat. (In recent years, Whiton has written a book about foreign policy and repeatedly appeared in conservative media.)

With McConnell unlikely to return to the Senate next year, who will the Republican leader be? — Christian Whiton (@ChristianWhiton) February 11, 2014

McConnell is facing Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin in the Republican primary, whom some prominent tea party activists are rallying around. The presumptive Democratic nominee is Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is in a statistic dead heat with the unpopular McConnell, according to several recent polls. But McConnell has raised much more money than his opponents and will be very difficult to unseat.