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GOP insiders skeptical of landslide predictions
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| Contributor | particleman |
| Last Edited | particleman Sep 09, 2010 09:55pm |
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| Category | General |
| Author | Byron York |
| News Date | Friday, September 10, 2010 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Things have gotten out of hand when it comes to predictions of a Republican victory in the upcoming midterm elections. In recent days, talk of a GOP edge has turned into talk of a GOP blowout. Prognosticators have upgraded the coming political storm from Category 4 to Category 5. Republican control of the House has gone from possible to inevitable.
But Republicans don't believe it, or at least the insiders involved in the midterm effort don't believe it. As they see it, they're in a good position to pick up the 39 seats needed to win control of the House, but polls showing a huge GOP lead are simply wrong. "I'm assuming that Cook and Rothenberg and Rove and the others have got different indications from what we've got," says one member of the House GOP election team. "I don't want to overestimate what's out there."
"I think it's about even," says a strategist involved in the GOP effort. "That is a remarkable place to be, given where we were in the '08 election. But it's about even."
Former Republican Rep. Vin Weber, a veteran of many campaigns, predicts Democrats "are going to have some success in bringing their troops home and rousing their base over the next few weeks," although Weber predicts Republicans will ultimately win control of the House.
Some of the talk downplaying the GOP lead may be counterspin to ensure Republicans don't become overconfident. "We don't want to cause our voters to get lax and think we've got it," says the member of the election team. But Republicans are also genuinely concerned about peaking too soon. "The notion of a wave that is already large and is going to build the next six or seven weeks into a massive Republican triumph is not, I think, accurate," says Weber.
Perhaps the best way to characterize the GOP election team now is confident but nervous -- confident that the basic trends of the election are going their way but nervous at the talk of a runaway victory. Be on guard against irrational exuberance, they're tel |
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