Sweet jumped-up Jeebis in a sidecar--I had to get the
transcript just to make sure I heard this right on tonight's PBS
Newshour, but I did. Mark Shields, whom I respect and always have for not over-reaching or over-reacting, actually said that a GOP legislator was already anticipating a loss of "30 seats in the House." Read on, MacDuff ...
I'm doing this one quick and dirty and may update it later with sage observations (or maybe not), but I just want to see that the news gets splayed all over the Kommunity ASAP:
MARK SHIELDS: The gloom is there. It's on the Hill. It's wherever two or more Republicans gather in [Bush's] name, I mean, really. I mean, the president's name comes up.
And there was one number -- I was talking to, probably, in my judgment, the most able Republican campaign legislator in the business -- and probably I'm giving away his identity by saying it -- and he said he thought that Republicans would lose right now 30 seats in the House.
What's interesting here is that one of the stories that Newshour featured had some good news for the White House, in that there is actually some positive diplomatic engagement on Darfur--not that most believe it will work. But neither a Darfur breakthrough, nor appointing a batch of conservative judges, nor a drop in gas prices, nor trumped-up spying polls can turn the tide, and here's why:
And the intensity, Ray, is all on the Democratic side. And it's an anti-Bush intensity. There was a question asked: Do you view your vote in the fall as a vote against President George W. Bush or a vote for President George W. Bush? And by a two-to-one margin, it was considered by voters who made that decision a vote against President Bush.
Whoever Shields has for a source, that source knows a lot more than we do (like who's hired a lawyer, who's missing meetings, who's putting a home up for sale, who's drinking earlier in the day, etc.), and I've had a theory all along: No matter how bad we see things are for the GOP in Congress, it can only get worse, worse, worse. I think it is being borne out with every new revelation, now coming at times at a two-a-day pace.