You may be right. I have been trying to figure the numbers out for a while. Certainly puts to rest (for a while) that the country had swung to the left again. That doesn’t mean they will not swing back again.
The Democratic campaign committee has probably not missed that either. That is the reason the squeaky voices have dropped in the last couple of months. Even the press has started to run some subtle pieces not entirely favorable of the other dem presidential candidates.
So we will probably see a couple of things between now and the election. First will be an attempt to really tar a high level Republican. They will try to pull a Tom Delay move and try to make the Republican will step down whether guilt or not (just like Delay). The Clinton slime machine will be the center of that. With the full support of the MSM.
Additionally they will reign in all the loud mouths, and look to see Hillary looking and sounding more centrist. She has started already with her hedging support of the yet to be released report from Petraeus.
The other dems are not playing in the same league with the Clinton's. The Republicans must consider that heavily. Hillary will have all their records and her investigators will have all the dirt.
The Clinton machine is sneaky and their timing is usually pretty good. The Repubs need to be ready for the attack because it will come. The Clinton machine has already quashed the Gore and Kerry feints. The others will be handled easily .
The 17% approval for the Dems is not much better for the Republicans... and actually favors the Republicans... after all the Dems "were put there to change thins" The Republicans can just propose bill after logical bill and force the dems to shoot them down. On the other side they can defeat as many bills as possible that are outside of the wishes of the mainstream..
The Republicans should get heavily on the anti-Illegal immigration band wagon. The support of firmness on those measures crosses party line and it could make Republicans the party most Americans agree with..
Then the dems will either need to fight them and look bad doing it, or side with them and then the Republicans will claim the high ground for being right on the issue there by creating a perception they are the party of the common people and running the issues that are important to ma and pa joe six-pack.
I have a wacky theory that I certainly cannot prove. But I will lay it out, as you mention Clinton and her FBI files. It looks to me as if the R’s have two powerful linebackers on the field both of whom have the goods on
Clinton and crime fighting expertise. They are Thompson and
Giulani. Either one could put her away for the rest of her life. You know that they have the goods on her, but Bush has not wanted to prosecute. In this analogy the linebackers are runnng interferance for Romney, the brainy quarterback.