Time Magazine does a horse-race article:
The signs suggest an anti-Republican wave is building, says nonpartisan electoral handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, whose Rothenberg Political Report is closely followed in Washington. “The only question is how high, how big, how much force it will have. I think it will be considerable.”
Right now, things look pretty good.
In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well.
Taking the House would put John Conyers in charge of the Judiciary Committee, and Henry Waxman in charge of the Government Reform Committee. The prospect of that happening has the GOP fidgety.
Administration officials say they fear that losing even one house of Congress would mean subpoenas and investigations–a taste of the medicine House Republicans gave Bill Clinton. “Everything will grind to a halt,” one said.
But GOP realists know the shit-hammer is poised to strike.
Gingrich says Republicans badly need accomplishments to tell voters about. “The country actually expects the majority to implement,” he says. “They hire you to govern, not just to tell them why you are right.”
The Republicans have no prospect of accomplishing anything substantive in this year’s Congress. So, what to do?
The most obvious line of defense for Republican candidates is to point out their differences with the President, as the party-wide revolt over the ports deal amply demonstrated. In the face of the Democrats’ “rubber stamp” charges, G.O.P. lawmakers are distancing themselves on other issues as well…
…But party leaders are warning privately against taking that strategy too far. “If Diet Coke criticizes Coke, people buy Pepsi, not Diet Coke,” said Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. In an internal Republican Party memo provided to TIME, Jan van Lohuizen, a longtime Bush pollster, warns candidates tempted to distance themselves that “President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the ’08 nomination. If he drops, we all drop.” Another Republican strategist describes the problem for G.O.P. candidates this way: “Adding weight to the anchor doesn’t help them.”
That doesn’t sound like a coherent strategy to me. How can they distance themselves from the President if their fate is tied up with the President? The Republicans are going to get drubbed in November.
True, what’s revealed of the current GOP strategy does sound like a bit of a mess.
Added to the mix as well, apparently, is a continual pandering to the ‘wackos’.
Here’s to an elections process with integrity ..
but we must continue to bolster The Democratic Spines
to have a successful conviction of Republicans of crimes.
Seems to me that we’re seeing a shying away from the issue of complicity in those crimes, with attendant paralysis.
Can you just picture the Terror alerts come September? The Republicans know they can instill fear through their ownership of the media and will no doubt do so.
Karl Rove already has a strategy, make no mistake about it. I would never underestimate the depths these people will sink to in order to keep power.
I’ve been through way too much in the last 5 years to count these slimeballs down in any way.
I totally agree! I hope that $RoveCo will limit themselves to terror alerts, rather than… some other possibilities I’d rather not think about.
When in doubt, fall back on fear and Diebold machines.
I won’t feel safe about the elections until they are over and very hopefully the rethugs lose many seats..right now I’m still worried that the democrats are going operate on the premise that the repubs are going to do themselves in and they won’t have to take that much of a stand on anything…their stand will simply be to be against the republicans running not for any progressive ideals or ideas and go with middle of the road candidates(which seems to be what they are doing so far)
I would hope the democrats would get a collective spine and start speaking out passionately about plans for the country that are real plans not just pie in the sky campaign talk.
the predictions of massive Dem gains in November are a bit premature.
I believe the electorate, in general, are searching for LEADERS with ANSWERS. The Dems, so far, have not shown themselves to be such. The Dems are not inspiring people to come out to vote for them. Their best hope right now is that people will be more disgusted with Repugs than Dems. This will not translate into additional Dem votes. It probably will only mean that more of the Repug vote will stay home.
Agreed, if you look at the recent Polling D’s are not all that well thought of. If they don’t begin to acknowledge the base and take a position(s) of an Opposition, the level of participation, of the public in general, in the election is likely to go down. Lot’s of people have given up having their voices heard, let alone their votes counted.
The R’s are demonstrably better at GOTV than the D’s have proven to be….even without Diebold.
IMO, if the D’s think they’re going to win by being silent, they, and subsequently- we, are going to be mightily disappointed.
It is a recipe for disaster.
Peace
They have Diebold.
The election of 2006 will not be a fair one. Republicans lose in fair elections. They have no plans of leaving now that they have stolen power. Do you really think they would open themselves up to such swift prosecution by having such a passe and arcane thing as a fair election?
All of this talk about Republicans being “nervous” is just, IMO, expectation-lowering scuttlebutt designed to give the talking heads something to talk about in November. Like Wolf/Matthews/O’Reilly/Hume/YFTH saying “Surprise landslide for the GOP! What will they do with their mandate?”