Can't Lose

U.S. News & World Report, in Bush Is Said to Have No Plan if GOP Loses, discusses the upcoming election, noting:

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president's news conference this week.

"They aren't even planning for if they lose," says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush's final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

Likewise, the Washington Post, White House Upbeat About GOP Prospects, writes about the "upbeat" view of Bush and Rove, stating:

Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections, there are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.

So what gives? Is it the bubble? Are they totally deluding themselves? As the Post queries:

The question is whether this is a case of justified confidence -- based on Bush's and Rove's electoral record and knowledge of the money, technology and other assets at their command -- or of self-delusion. Even many Republicans suspect the latter.

Or is there something else at work? For example, in the Washington Spectator, The Elephant in the Polling Booth, Mark Crispin Miller suggests:

To say that this election could go either way is not to say that the Republicans have any chance of winning it. As a civic entity responsive to the voters' will, the party's over, there being no American majority that backs it, or that ever would. Bush has left the GOP in much the same condition as Iraq, Afghanistan, the global climate, New Orleans, the Bill of Rights, our military, our economy and our national reputation. Thus the regime is reviled as hotly by conservatives as by liberals, nor do any moderates support it.

* * * *

And so the Democrats are feeling good, and calling for a giant drive to get the vote out on Election Day. Such an effort is essential—and not just to the Democrats but to the very survival of this foundering Republic. However, such a drive will do the Democrats, and all the rest of us, more harm than good if it fails to note a certain fact about our current situation: i.e., that the Democrats are going to lose the contest in November, even though the people will (again) be voting for them. The Bush Republicans are likely to remain in power despite the fact that only a minority will vote to have them there. That, at any rate, is what will happen if we don't start working to pre-empt it now.

Even though this election could go either way, neither way will benefit the Democrats. Either the Republicans will steal their "re-election" on Election Day, just as they did two years ago, or they will slime their way to "victory" through force and fraud and strident propaganda, as they did after Election Day 2000. Whichever strategy they use, the only way to stop it is to face it, and then shout so long and loud about it that the people finally perceive, at last, that their suspicions are entirely just—and, this time, just say no.

Now, I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the 2004 (and 2000?) election was "fixed." See, Can We Try Again?

It does seem that the reality of who the Republicans really are (and what they have done to U.S.) is starting to be understood by the electorate. Things certainly have been going downhill for the Republicans (read that: polls), so it no surprise that the Republican Party is concerned about the future.

So, when I start reading about how sure Bush & his cronies are of winning the November election, I just have to shake my head and wonder . . . .

UPDATE: At least I'm not alone in my paranoid ruminations. Lyn Davis Lear at Huffington Post, Why is the White House so Eerily Confident about the Coming Elections?, asks:

Are these guys simply narcissistic idiots Rove-ing around in some never-never land bubble or do they know something we don't? Have they planned a grab bag nose punch of an October/November surprise? Or have Diebold, ES&S, and local state secretaries assured them that they will do "whatever it takes" to get a Republican Congress elected again?

Tags: Bush, Politics, Election