Just last week The Weekly Standard founder and editor was blasting Mitt Romney over his comments at the secretly recorded fundraiser. He called the remarks arrogant and stupid. Kristol even joked about Romney stepping down so Paul Ryan could head a Ryan-Rubio ticket.
Well, at least Republicans can count on holding the House, right? But now Kristol is telling his conservative readers the House may also be lost:
In other words, IF the polls are right, and IF nothing much changes over the remaining six weeks, the House could well be in play. Maybe things will move in a Republican direction. Or maybe Republicans will hold on in an even popular vote election with the help of incumbency advantages and post-2010 redistricting. But it's also possible that an Obama +3 victory on Election Day would drag the Democrats to an edge in the congressional vote—and control of the House. In any case, based on current polling, I don't think one can say that it's now out of the question that we could wake up on the morning of November 7 to the prospect of ... Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Between his post last week on Romney and this newer one, Kristol may be signalling a broader theme of the Republican "elite": maybe we should give up on Romney and start worrying about the legislative branches. This should cause us some concern but not too much. It's a vicious cycle of demoralizing that we need to see play out on the GOP side. Here's his closing line:
If I may once again quote the prophet Aladdin: “Abu, this is no time to panic. . . . Start panicking!”
As others have diaried, Romney is spending a lot of time fundraising these days. Republican money may have already shifted to Senate and House races. But a collapse at the top of the ticket is exactly what we want to see. A lot of voters only bother voting in presidential years. If they're not motivated to vote for Romney, it's unlikely they'll be voting at all.