REASON FOR HOPEFULNESS OF THE PART OF THE REPUBLICANS?

Republicans are taking heart in a story in today's Moonie Times that GOP electoral prospects are looking up. Apparently Cheney and Rove have gotten their allies at Big Oil to lower the price of gasoline in the hopes of staving off a midterm disaster. Interestingly, Big Oil has been lowering the price of gas in states with the tightest races: Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Kentucky.

The Moonie Times echoing feeble Republican talking points about how great the economy under Bush is, just reminds voters that the Regime is either bizarrely out of touch with reality... or liars. Even fiscal conservatives, half the base of the Party of Greed and Bigotry (the greed part), are starting to acknowledge that the Bush Regime has been their worst nightmare. Richard Viguerie is urging fiscal Republicans to stop donating to the party and to sit the midterms out. I mean how smart do you have to be to figure out that Bush is more a power-grabbing fascist than a small-government fiscal conservative when he took the huge Clinton budget surplus and turned it into the biggest budget deficit in history?


Zogby's explanation is two fold: Bush screaming about the alleged war on terror and the abysmal job being done by the DCCC's Rahm Emanuel-- "the Democrats' failure to lay out a clear plan of their own on 'how are we're going to get out of Iraq and what they would do about terrorism that's better than the Republicans.' Democrats 'are not giving their Democratic base what it needs to hear on those issues,' Mr. Zogby said. 'Republicans are severely wounded. The Democrats should be crushing them, and they are not.'"

But are GOP prospects really looking up? Rasmussen downgraded Republican senate races in Montana, Ohio and Rhode Island today, from toss-ups to lean-Democrat. Conventional wisdom inside and outside the Beltway is no longer asking if the Democrats will take back the House, but by how many seats-- and can they also take back The Senate. Most impartial observers see a 50/50 split right now. If the Dems pick up Virginia, Nevada, Arizona or get New Jersey back in line, they'll hold both houses of Congress in January. Even in states where the Republicans looked like they could win a few governorships-- important positions they often use in stealing elections, the way they did in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004-- the tide has turned noticeably grim for them.

Voters across the country have gotten the idea that it's time to throw the rascals out. In fact, speaking of throwing the rascals out, if you feel at all flush today, anyone who contributes at least $20 to the Blue America PAC (which is raising money to put targeted "rascals" radio spots on the air) will get a rare CD today of that song (by Rickie Lee Jones and Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher, formerly of the Squirrel Nut Zippers). The CD cannot be purchased anywhere for any amount of money. Good day to make a contribution to doing something about cleaning up Bush's mess, no?