Perhaps, perhaps not. There's plenty of wishful thinking elsewhere, among the rats and the “teach ’em a lesson” brigade.
No, the polls are what is the wishful thinking. Go look at the internals of these polls to find out just how bad and contrived they are. The ever egregious NewsWeak poll had 11 percentage points more Democrats than Republicans when the actual differential in the voting population is about 3-4 points. That grossly exaggerates Democratic opinion in these polls, and the others have been doing the same skewing all year long by overpolling Democrats if you look at the numbers.
From what I'm seeing, Republicans are fired up and angry at the Democratic hypocrisy and dirty tricks over the Foley thing. It is near consensus opinion among the base as I'm hearing on talk radio and here on FR that conservatives would crawl over hot coals to vote next month they're so pissed off at this crap. Conservatives know what's at stake in this election and it's not some ex-congressman's perverted private life.
The fact is, a sleeping giant has been awakened on the right. This will do little to add to the fuel of Democratic partisans already determined to defeat the GOP. But it has fired up a lot of Republicans who had previously been disaffected and we're not going to vote. I've heard them saying not only will they now vote, they're donating to the RNC!
And I give the American public who aren't necessarily part of the GOP more credit too than to tie their vote to one idiot who isn't their congressman. From what I'm hearing people who have talked to others say, they are shrugging it off saying "He's not my congressman." They see this as a political cheap shot too.
And other than Hastert's stupid press conference yesterday, I don't see anyone other than the media being distracted by this. Clearly the president isn't and continues to make the case to the American public that we're in a world of threats that need to be addressed substantively and not by playing to an extreme left wing base like the Democrats.
No, this is not wishful thinking at all. The wishful thinking is coming from the Democrats and their media organ grinder monkeys and the rigged polls they put out. The GOP's GOTV effort is going to be huge and set the Democrats back on their heels. Go read last week's Time Magazine account of how good this effort has gotten, even down to knowing which individual households to target. (I'll find you the link if you're unable to find it yourself. You will be truly astonished at it.) They're scary good at this and have it down to an absolute science. And the Democrats can't begin to match the GOP's money or ability at GOTV. The Democrats are whistling past the graveyard having no clue about the GOTV juggernaut that's coming their way. I'm not saying the GOP will have any net gains, but we will hold on.
So turn off the media background noise and develop some confidence. Believing the arrogant pronouncements of one of the biggest propaganda machines in the history of mankind is just a waste of your time. Foley is the media's distraction, not the rest of voting America's. Most of the rest of America doesn't share the biases, obsessions and shallowness of the Clown Car Media.