Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly has noticed a distinct deflation of Republican electoral expectations as of late:
For the last several months, congressional Republicans acted as if taking the majority of at least one chamber was practically a foregone conclusion. The question wasn't whether the House GOP would be in the majority in 2011, but how big it would be.
Have you noticed the dramatic shift in rhetoric of late?
After spending months measuring the drapes in the Speaker's office, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said this week it would be a "steep climb" for the GOP to take control of the House this year.
Frankly, the audacious projections of Republicans and their political allies during this campaign cycle has always seemed ill-advised.
In addition to potentially creating a climate of complacency, it also makes a fairly robust gain of 20-30 seats into...of all things...a disappointment. And it would have make a modest gain of 10-20 seats into an absolute disaster.
Consider what happened earlier this month in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The GOP's relentless hyping of their own resurgence helped to sustain a media narrative that made the election of Republican Tim Burns in Pennsylvania's 12th district into something of an inevitability. After all, thought the punditocracy, if the GOP can't win in a district like this one (carried by John McCain, for crying out loud), then where could they win?
Had the GOP not felt the compulsion to thump their chests, the betting line on that special election might have been tempered. And the victory of Democrat Mark Critz might have been notable more for its margin (a wider-than-expected 10,000 votes) than for its outcome.
Still, even the Republican rationale for lowering their expectations is more than a bit ridiculous:
McCarthy said that top GOPers have told him they hope to win in the neighborhood of 37 seats rather than 40 so they're in a stronger position to have good back-to-back cycles and win the WH in '12.
Really? Is the GOP going to tell potentially successful candidates to lose on purpose, so that they can stay under a forty-seat gain?
McCarthy has been one of the Republicans hyping expectations throughout the cycle, as the chief recruiter for the NRCC (the campaign arm for House Republicans). He explained that this, in part, was the product of a misunderstanding:
[McCarthy] noted that it's going to be very close, and that he's never said the number of seats GOPers will win will number in the triple digits. Explaining remarks that have been misconstrued by some of his contemporaries - that there are 100 or 130 seats in play - McCarthy explained it's been his job to recruit solid candidates who can put many of those seats on the board.
It is worth noting, by the way, that there have been a number of those "solid" recruits who did not even survive the Republican primaries. Remember Ethan Hastert? How about Mary Beth Buchanan? And, really, who could forget Vaughn Ward?
The bottom line is this cycle has proven throughout to be extraordinarily difficult to predict. And, for the GOP, the damage might have already done. It remains to be seen whether a full year of hyping and overhyping electoral expectations can be undone by a handful of more tempered predictions. They might have already created an expectations monster, one that might consume their momentum if they underperform in November.