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Like a Hurricane

“Time is running out for Republicans. Unless something dramatic happens before Election Day, Democrats will take control of the House. And the chances that they’ll seize the Senate are rising toward 50-50. “The electoral hurricane bearing down on the GOP looks likely to be a Category 4 or 5, strong enough to destroy at least […]

“Time is running out for Republicans. Unless something dramatic happens before Election Day, Democrats will take control of the House. And the chances that they’ll seize the Senate are rising toward 50-50.

“The electoral hurricane bearing down on the GOP looks likely to be a Category 4 or 5, strong enough to destroy at least one of the party’s majorities. The political climate feels much as it did before previous elections that produced sizable upheavals, such as in 1994, when Democrats lost 52 House seats, eight Senate seats, and control of both chambers.” ~Charlie Cook of National Journal, via Political Wire

Via Joshua Micah Marshall

This is in line with all of the projections from earlier in the year, and there is increasingly little reason to think that the GOP can significantly change its electoral fortunes in the month left to them before the Labour Day recess and the beginning of full campaigning season.  The GOP has no reason to be optimistic.  Historically, the party that holds the White House gets trampled in the sixth year of any two-term President (a pattern broken only by the ineptitude of Newt Gingrich and the GOP in ’98), and this is a particularly unpopular Congress and President.  It may be that the cautious estimates of Democrats eking out victories in one or both houses are too conservative, and that the “hurricane” will be much more devastating than the Red Republicans fear or Dems dare to hope.

Everything is working against the ruling party.  Iraq continues to bleed; the “good news” from Iraq is that the priority placed on force protection has meant that fewer Americans are dying in this pointless war (which is good for them and for the country, but not particularly good for the fortunes of that war), but that comes at the price of essentially conceding that Iraq will be won or lost by the current Iraqi goverment, which probably means that it will be lost. 

Administration and Senate sell-outs on immigration have generated incalculable outrage out in the country that may come to be seen as the key reason why the Republicans go down to defeat this year.  They may have Dobleve and his boy genius Rove to thank for managing to lose what should be a secure Republican House majority for the sake of pursuing the chimera of increasing the Republican share of the Hispanic vote.  Similarly ingenious attempts by the GOP to bribe Hispanics with insulting pandering of this kind in the past, such as having votes on Puerto Rican statehood (always a deeply meaningful issue for people from Mexican and Guatemalan backgrounds), have always, always failed–why would this be any different?  (On a somewhat separate note, if Castro should die fairly soon and there is a serious reassessment of policy towards Cuba, the GOP may no longer enjoy its relative lock on the Cuban community in the future.)

The war on Lebanon may indirectly fire up some core supporters who will want to reward Bush and the GOP for lockstep pro-Israel sentiment, but it is unlikely that there will be enough of these voters to make up for the masses of disenchanted conservatives who may simply stay away from the polls all together.

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