...look pretty bad. There are two polls out today in Georgia showing the challenger Jim Martin surging and now within the margin of error of Senator Saxby Chambliss. Martin is an attractive candidate, and he’s been runing some focused, witty commercials link Saxby with President Bush. Chambliss is listed on RCP as the 12th most likely Republican to lose, and the blurb says he’s heavily faovred for reelection. (And until very lately nobody much in Georgia thought Martin had a chance.) The RCP most recent poll has Dole down eight in NC, Smith down five in Oregon, and McConnell up only one in Kentucky. There is more than one way the Democrats could get to 60.
Say a prayer for the Senate Republicans. If the Democrats can get 60, and Obama wins, conservatives will be trading in their Reagan nostalgia for George W. nostalgia. Conservatives need to understand that they are not just on the brink of losing an election, but of being marginalized for the forseeable future and having the country's domestic institutions transformed in a way that future conservative victories will find very difficult to undo.
pete is right again.
Even if the commercials were duds, so long as Chambliss is linked with Bush, ------ they're bound to be effective.
Bush is detested throughout the land.
He's the incarnation of political death.
And PETE, as bad as it's likely to get if Obama prevails, this Republican will NEVER indulge in a misplaced nostalgia for the man that landed the entire party in this boat.
GW has been a disgraceful party leader. This 2d term, especially the latter half thereof, it's almost as if he's declared a private, secret war against the GOP.
If we lose, will we be marginalized?
Yes!
If the Democrats throw the door wider open to immigration, and simultaneously alter the citizenship process to allow for accelerated passage, THEN it will be the GOP that is, in Zell Miller's immortal phrase, "a national party no more." Sure there will be red redoubts pockmarked across the fruited plain. Beleaguered bastions of Republicans struggling to hang on amidst the forces that surround him, but as a party capable of contesting nationally, ----------------- no.
Furthermore, Dems will move immediately to shut down conservative talk radio, under the auspices of a fradulent "fairness doctrine."
What George Walker Bush has done is so far beyond the pale of settlement that he ought to be banished from the party, a party that he did just about everything he could to destroy. IF HE WERE TRYING TO DO SO INTENTIONALLY, he could hardly have done as much damage as he has. Now just think about that one. The damage he did, if done inadvertantly, is more than equal to any he might have inflicted deliberately.
Dubai Ports deal, Meirs, immigration, --------------- and now this, ------------ we didn't think he could exceed that immigration nightmare, but he found a way.
There won't be any nostalgia for him.
Republican disgust with him is the equal to any Democrat.
Conservatives need to understand that they are not just on the brink of losing an election, but of being marginalized for the forseeable future
Conservatives have been marginalized for a long time now. Probably since Reagan left town. We're used to being marginalized.
1: Pete -- yes, exactly.
Pete #1, yes, I also agree and find it all quite depressing. When some conservatives speak of sending Republicans to the woodshed for a chastising - or ritual purification, or something like that - it is not as if the nation gets some kind of respite from trouble and strife. "Let the nation see what a mess liberals will make of things." That already happened. American government already went through the transformation and conservative victories already were Pyhrric, which is why we are here, watching this particularly nasty tide wash in. What was GWB trying to do but give those American bureaucratic institutions a conservatively tinted paint job?
People, we have a month. Let's stop moaning and get in there and fight. Every Senate seat is worth it. Every vote is worth it. If we lose, we'll have plenty of time to moan again. For now, let's give masochism a rest.