What's wrong with the Republicans

In the New York Times today, Bush is using his rose-colored glasses again. But this time, instead of looking at Iraq, he's looking at the November elections. Take a look at what the White House is doing:

 

The capital is filled with Republicans convinced that they will lose the House and maybe the Senate. So last week, the White House and party leaders convened a "friends and allies" teleconference to dispute what Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, considers flawed conventional wisdom.

For 20 minutes, Mr. Mehlman and the White House political director, Sara Taylor, tried to lift the cloak of gloom that has descended on the top ranks of Republican strategists, using what one of the dozens of lobbyists, donors, party aides and other supporters who listened in later called "happy talk."

Despite the "happy talk," the faithful aren't convinced:

"I'm trying to buck people up, but let's just say I'm hiding all the sharp objects in my office," said Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman who now runs a consulting firm.

And

Even Mary Matalin, the longtime Bush family aide and confidante, confessed, "I'm in my stoic mode now," though she said she believed that the party would prove the dire predictions wrong.

But guess who else is a "Gloomy Gus"?

In an interview shown Sunday on ABC News, Mr. Bush was asked about a comment by the first President Bush, who said this month that he hated to think about life for his son if Democrats took control of Congress. "He shouldn't be speculating like that, because he should have called me ahead of time," the president said, "and I'd tell him they're not going to."

No matter what they do now, they are swimming uphill against the Iraq war. The fighting is so intense, each new report is like another anti-Bush ad. The military death toll for the month is over 80 and reports now come in that instead of 1 or 2 U.S. soldiers being killed, reports are now of 6 to 8 soldiers being killed.

So the October surprise is actually October surprises of the Republicans' own making' and it has been used to shoot themselves in the feet. It was their policies to rape Iraq that has made it so unstable. It was their own policy to look the other way while Rep. Foley preyed on pages for years that has heavily tipped polls toward the Democrats.