The GOP forced the Dems to choose between the general election next year and the primaries, and the Dems chose the general election. The result will be threefold: 1) a dramatic decrease in funding of the Dems across the board, but especially the House members' campaigns (as if Dean wasn't hurting them enough in that area anyway); 2) a decrease in the committed volunteers from the Michael Moore/Moveon/Moonbat wing; and 3) probably the most serious, intense challenges in the primaries for many of these incumbents from the left. By the way, for all the Rush Limbaugh bashers on the board, this was precisely the strategy that Rush recommended before he left on break: MAKE the Dems become more extreme and cater to their base even more.Very astute observation, IMHO; the Plame smear went nowhere; the bribery smear will have to go nowhere because it mostly smears the Dhimmicrats; the DeLay smear may succeed, but if it does, there will be payback, not least at the polls; the NSA smear backfired bigtime, even though the partisan media shills are trying to keep it going to try manufacture consent (a phrase from the reprehensible Noam Chomsky), a strategy that will further backfire by further radicalizing the base and alienating it from other votes who can see how crazy it is and how crazy they are.
This same issue, however---the war---is now being replayed over the NSA powers, and Bush/the GOP can win big again by forcing the Dems further left. Bush should MAKE THEM oppose the NSA and wiretapping AQ's phones. Let's see how far that flies.
BTW, when I wrote that, I had predicted the GOP would have a net gain of one Senate seat. Right now, that seems a certainty (lose PA, win MD and MN), but just a little shift can rescue Santorum in PA and bring Nelson's seat in FL into our column, giving us a net of three!!