From
PoliticoGOP cancer: Party could lose 20 more seats
By JOHN F. HARRIS & JOSH KRAUSHAAR | 5/14/08 8:09 PM EST
For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking.
Suddenly — belatedly — all pretense is gone.
The Republican defeat in Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi, in a deeply conservative district where, in an average year, Democrats cannot even compete, was a clear sign that the GOP has the political equivalent of cancer that has spread throughout the body. Many House GOP operatives are privately predicting that the party could easily lose up to 20 seats this fall.
Combined with the 30 seats that the GOP lost in 2006, that would leave the party facing a 70-vote deficit against Democrats in the House — a state of powerlessness reminiscent of Republicans’ long wilderness years in the 1960s and ’70s.
Things are not particularly more hopeful on the Senate side, where most analysts say Democrats have a strong chance of adding five or more seats to their current majority.
Panic and blame-casting for the dire condition were flowing in equal measures Wednesday inside the House Republican Conference and among party elders and operatives outside.
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