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Howlin, I think you have a point.

If the Democrats get back the Senate and the White House, they will act in a way not seen since the Civil War.

They have watched what has happened to them over the past several years, and they see, very clearly, their shocking weakness as the minority.

The understand that the strongest permanent bulwark to maintaining their power is maintaining command of the courts, and if they get back the White House and the Senate, or if they get the White House and the Republicans in the Senate actually follow their own stupid rhetoric about filibusters and won't filibuster Democrat judicial nominees, the Dems will pack the courts with hard-core activists, and legislate from the bench far more aggressively than in the past. In the past, it has been haphazard, but if they get power back, they will coordinate control of the courts by design.

They will do something else too.
If the Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate, and the White House, they will change the rules of the Senate and end the filibuster. They see how this could be used now, and fear it. But the Republicans are playing by the old rules. If the Dems get back the White House and even have 50 Senate seats, they will "go nuclear" on the first filibuster, and the Senate will become a "majority rule" chamber, just like the House.

A third thing the Democrats have learned, well, is how to use political prosecutions to destroy political opponents. They learned this from the Clinton investigation and impeachment. They are using it on Delay now, and Frist, and Scooter Libby, but they do not control the AG office. When they do, they will target investigations at sitting Congressmen, and they will use sweeping prosecutorial powers to remove from office enough politicians from states with Democratic governors that the gubernatorial appointments will give them majorities in the Congress. If you cannot defeat an opponent politically, you can indict him on trumped up charges, prosecute him and jail him.

And finally, when THEY are back in control of the elections commission, they already "know" what the Republicans have done: inserted secret codes into electronic voting to get majorities, etc. Of course Republicans (probably) haven't really done that, at least not yet. But many Democrats believe that they have, and have thought out the strategy. Electoral fraud is a Demcratic machine artform. And the recent bitter elections have taught them how to do it.

So, how could a Democrat win the White House, or even pick up Congress?
The John Anderson/Ross Perot factor. Conservatives and various issue voters and liberatarians who normally trend Republican are furious enough with Bush and the GOP - especially in the perennially unstable Midwest - for a neo-Reform Party movement, perhaps a party composed of military veterans, to suddenly stand up and take a decisive bloc of votes. If such a rising party were to actually run Congressional candidates and siphon off votes, the Democrats could pick up quite a few seats.

Once they get ahold of power again, they will use all of the lessons of their time in the wilderness to bring down the iron fist on the opposition. The US legal and political system are structured to facilitate such abuse. It just hasn't occurred to anybody since Lincoln to actually use the full implied powers of office in such a way as to legally crush out opposition.

If the Democrats get power back, they will keep it for a long, long time, and they will do that by destroying a lot of Republicans' lives using the prosecutorial power of the state. Call it the Sulla Strategy.

To avoid that nightmare scenario, Republicans have to be smart. Bush's move on Miers was not smart, at all. But fortunately one clear shot has been offered, now, to extrictate himself. He's got to take it. He's got to throw red meat to the conservative base and name a religious, conservative judicial constructionist, a known quantity. And then he needs to be ruthless with certain members of the Senate. If Arlen Specter resists, Arlen Specter needs to be expelled from the Republican caucus and someone else given the chairmanship. Nothing can be allowed to derail this nominee. Everything is riding on this.

Once it's done, the President needs to make a forced march through the border issue. He can shore up a lot of Republican support, and incidentally diminish future illegal Democrat votes, by putting more forces on the border to keep it closed.

There's no margin for error now.
If the President doesn't see that, and miscalculates, it will be a calamity for the Republicans. And you're right: if that happens, the Democrats will be in command for a long, long time. Because THEY will do to their Specters precisely what needs to be done now by Republicans to ensure that a conservative strict constructionist gets on the Court.