"For example, Rove says many races went down to the wire--there were 35 House contests in which the winner got 51 percent of the vote or less--suggesting that the country is still closely divided between Republicans and Democrats. In the 18 races decided by 8,000 or fewer votes, the GOP won 12 and lost six, Rove says. Rove argues that there was a bad "environment" for the GOP, one marked by stories of scandal and corruption, intensified by the unpopularity of the Iraq war and President Bush.
Rove estimates that 10 House seats were lost to the GOP specifically because of one-time scandals and that those losses weren't due to any flawed strategy on his part. Rove also says the results were not outside the norm in which a president's party generally suffers losses in congressional elections in his sixth year. In addition, Rove tells glum Republicans that the party "saved" eight to 14 GOP candidates because of its vaunted 72-hour plan to get out the GOP vote."
This is all true.
Why the controversy? Maybe because that act of 'saving some GOP' candidates wasnt quite good enough, and it is scary that it could have been worse, and unfortunate that we couldnt do just a *little* bit better to cut House losses to under 20 and keep the senate.
I expected 12-18 losses in the House and -3 in the Senate, and was frankly shocked at how bad we did. We muffed it big-time and there is plenty of blame to share around.
This isn't very comforting. How many of these toss-up districts were considered "safe Republican" 2, or 4, or 6 years ago? It appears that a case can be made that the narrow "Republican majority" in this country has slipped away. I think this can all be turned around within two years, but it's going to take a rejuvenated Republican Party with a new vision and message.