The Washington Times

Here’s an observation for one week before the midterm: Throughout the Bush administration, Democrats have generally believed that they are poised on the brink of victory, which makes sense to them as a matter of right: They deserve to win because Republicans deserve to lose. Republicans, for their part, have generally believed that Democrats have it about right: The Republican Party fears defeat is at hand, and that, in truth, the party has it coming.    

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The Washington Times

Is the GOP position in collapse, freefall, meltdown? For such is the impression you could get. For example, in Virginia, a reliably Republican state in presidential voting, a once-popular incumbent senator, once expected to be a credible candidate for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination following his easy re-election this year, is in trouble, or such is the impression you could get. A major newspaper (not this one) has gotten into the habit of referring to the race as a “virtual tie.” If the Virginia seat goes Democratic, it’s hard to see how Republicans won’t be losing their Senate majority.    

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The Washington Times

There was one consistently amusing poll question asked in the run-up to the 2004 presidential primary season. It asked people whether they would vote for George W. Bush or the Democratic nominee for president. More people said they would prefer the Democrat.    

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The Washington Times

If I had to sum up the conventional wisdom a month before the congressional elections, it would be this: If Democrats can’t win control of the House this year, they really are lame. The trouble with that analysis is that it vastly understates the difficulty of picking up 15 seats in the House of Representatives.

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The Washington Times

When Karl Rove relinquished the position of deputy White House chief of staff earlier this year, supposedly in order to concentrate full-time on retaining the Republican majority in this year’s congressional elections, the most prevalent Washington reaction was that the move constituted a demotion. Mr. Rove, at the time, was barely (or perhaps not entirely) out of the woods from the independent counsel investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and those who had been clamoring for (or at least eagerly anticipating) his comeuppance couldn’t resist imposing their narrative on this White House personnel move.

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