Will GOP Pay The Price For Foley?American Prospect: Scandal Could Bury Republicans In Midterm Elections
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Republicans are in trouble — and it is not the kind of trouble that dissipates with time or the kind that can be overridden by the usual political subterfuge or great 30-second ads in the waning weeks of the campaign.
This is the kind of trouble that takes root. It is found not just in the garden variety public cynicism most politicians are used to enduring, but in the personal, visceral disdain occasioned by people being able to see clear through to politicians' motives and character — and being repelled by them.
As a result, I am now in the big-wage tent betting that the GOP will lose control of both houses of Congress — and, in the House, likely not by a small margin. And it is Mark Foley who will play a larger-than-anticipated role in his party's demise. Of course, many factors have coalesced to help usher Republicans out the door: midterm elections in two-term presidencies are never good for the president's party; the war in Iraq is, to say the very least, more protracted than we had prepared for; and despite the hopeful economic trends, there is a nervousness coursing through the economy that has kept Americans' enthusiasm for it consistently dim.
Still, it is the Foley episode that will end up burying the whole party this election. I emphasize "election" in the singular because, despite the fact that there are of course hundreds of individual local contests this year involving hundreds of individual, local issues, November 7 will be a national election day. It'll be about the war in Iraq, who controls the Congress, and how changing the latter would affect the former. People understand they are voting for congressional control — there is no longer any way of obscuring the fact that this election is now about who's in charge and what that means for the country.<snip>
Link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/13/opinion/main2088044.shtmlThat's the last thing the rePukes wanted. A nationalized mid-term election. Looks like they're gettin it anyway!
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