I’ve now moved through the five stages of grief following Blooper Tuesday. I’m ready to move forward. I have accepted the fact that John McCain will be the Republican nominee and the next move is up to me.
What to do?????
I think the next step is one that we conservatives have learned well from McCain over the past few years. We say how much we respect and admire “Our friend” John McCain and then use him and all that he stands for to accomplish our goal of electing a Republican majority in the House and make sure that the Senate stays near an even split.
At this point you may think that my fifth step was “delusion” rather than acceptance. Hear me out.
In ’06 the Republicans lost 31 House seats while the Democrats lost none. Admittedly, these elections occurred during a large downdraft on the Republicans that came from the continual play of bad news from Iraq. While the Democrats want you to believe that the House turnover was some kind of a mandate, reading through this summary of the 31 races that were lost by Republicans in ’06, one sees that rather than a mandate, the races were lost due to issues that were largely specifc to the various districts or candidates. Couple the situational nature of these loses with the fact that nearly all of these districts lean Republican, they now have a first term Democrat from a Congress with nearly historical low ratings and I think we have a recipe for turning this back to the good guys.
So where does Hill come into this? In the few days since Blooper Tuesday, Hill has dropped and BO has increased by over 10 points in their likelihood of being Democratic nominee. I think this plan works only if McCain is running against Hill in the general. As I’ve said before, I think a Hill/McCain election will bring a number of Democrats who can’t stand Hill to vote for McCain. It may also cause some Dems to sit it out because of their disdain for her. If McCain gets solid support from the Republican base I believe he can win with something that approaches a landslide margin.
Of course there’s no guarantee that a strong showing by McCain will extend to House races. However, most of the 31 “lost” districts have a history of voting Republican. I would expect that we should at least see a rebalancing of traditional R/D voting breakdown versus the abberrance we saw in the ’06 elections. Also, ’06 is the first time since 1948 that no Dem lost a seat! These factors should allow the 31 “lost” disctricts a fighting chance of returning to the R column with maybe a bit of cushion from a couple of “unexpected” Dem loses.
As odd as it may seem,Let’s regain the House! join Team Hillary! (but only through the primaries!)
