It is Election Eve, so what is the blog right Echo Chamber echoing as their side seems set to suffer some significant political losses?  They are, of course, talking up the recent polls showing some improvement in the GOP’s dreadful position in the polls.  But there is more.  We have some remarkable examples for you. 

Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush says confidently:

“We’re gonna clobber ’em tomorrow…”

On a distinct but somewhat related topic (Rumsfeld and Iraq), Mr. Noonan also offers one of the last great statements of the True Believers:

The fundamental flaw in the meme is the fact that Iraq is not a defeat – it is a signal victory in the War on Terrorism, and only the relentless drumbeat of defeatism from electioneering Democrats and their lapdog MSM give the impression that things are out of control in Iraq.

Wow.  Thus spake the man whose blog ignored Maliki’s capitulation to Sadr last week and the abandonment of an American soldier, who is, by the way, still being held captive.  If I ignored what was happening in Iraq, I, too, might be inclined to spout off with a lot of nonsense about how all is well and everything to the contrary is the fabrication of the Media Elite.  (When I read blogs like this one, I am reminded of the President Clarke’s Nightwatch from Babylon-5.)  I thought Party Headquarters had told these people to stop the “the media never report the good news” rhetoric after Iraqis started killing each other in the thousands.

Jim Geraghty at National Review‘s TKS writes:

Clearly, while the outlook is much better for Republicans than just a week ago, the party isn’t out of the woods yet.  

Isn’t out of the woods?  They are deep in the middle of the forest. 

Hugh Hewitt is cautions against too much optimism on the GOP side with the warning that the Republicans might suffer the same fate as Gerry Ford–as if they would be so lucky to have it that close.

K-Lo keeps the faith for Rick Santorum (“this race is in play”), who was last seen trailing by 16 in the latest poll.

Kevin Holtsberry at RedState declares:

The bottom line is that if you are a conservative, or center-right, Republican living in Ohio you need to get out and vote for the Republican ticket.  There are no moral victories to be had tomorrow.

Isn’t it a kind of moral victory to vote out a party implicated in widespread corruption and betrayals of principle?  I continue to marvel at how partisans can justify any amount of misrule, corruption and failure because “the other side” is always worse.  Perhaps the other side is worse.  At the present moment, this is speculation based in past experience of many years ago, which is worth taking seriously but which cannot really outweigh the experience of the last five or six years.  If the rule of politics is often, “what have you done for me lately?” the rule of this year’s election is, “what have you done to me lately?”  On this score, the Democrats come off as being less offensive, in spite of their many, many, many flaws.   

It is one of the interesting things about the democratic process these people are normally so keen on supporting and spreading to inhospitable lands that it is healthy and important to have frequent and regular turnover of elected officials.  It was supposedly part of the design of having biennial elections for the House that the turnover of elected representatives would be frequent and would toss out numerous incumbents.  We have solved that “problem,” and we can blame almost all of this on the rise of established factions that have their own interests in perpetuating relatively stable possession of many of the positions of power in Congress.  We have mostly made sure that what should be a commonplace turnover of dozens of seats is a once-in-a-generation event worthy of parallels with the greatest historic election results of all time.  In other words, the factions have made sure that representative government becomes lax and unresponsive, and ensures that incumbents in safe districts can only lose their positions if they commit felonies or heinous frauds against the public trust (and maybe not even then!); other than that, their constituents have no real choice. 

The turnover disrupts the concentration of power, the insolence of office, the petty corruption of incumbents and the entrenchment of people who cease to heed their constituents.  It is what some might call a small dose of self-government.  It isn’t much, but it is something.  American politics has become sclerotic and there is a great deal of dead tissue because of a lack of proper circulation, but Republican partisans advocate preventing an infusion of new blood and the improvement of circulation.  They would apparently sooner see the limbs of the body politic become gangrenous and rot off than accept that the time for their period out of power has come.  In their party loyalty, they have shown that they will indulge and endorse almost every kind of betrayal and corruption.  (Were the positions reversed, Democratic partisans would do the same, but the positions are not reversed.)  Should such people be rewarded with success?  Clearly not.

Another True Believer opines:

And the beginning of losing the Iraq War isn’t until the Democrats take the majority seats in January.

Because, you see, we are winning right now.  That is the mentality that will be encouraged and vindicated if the Democrats fail to win control of Congress.