The leader of the NRSC, John Ensign, has availed himself of the peculiar Republican propensity to define "success" as "whatever the current situation is". Thus, the GOP is forever "succeeding" in everything that it does.
Now, the NRSC has re-defined "success" as losing no more than eight Senate seats.
From TPM:
In a further sign that Republican hopes are fading badly, the head of the Senate GOP's campaign committee has set a new goal for the party this Fall: Not to lose too many Senate seats.
NRSC chair John Ensign has moved the goal posts, according to the Savannah Morning News, saying that the GOP will have succeeded if they don't lose more than eight seats.
Ensign pointed out that if the Dems win nine seats they'll get to the filibuster-proof magic number of 60 -- at which point, Ensign warned, "they will be able to do pretty much whatever they want."
So if the Dems can't get to a 60-seat super-majority, the GOP will have won. Talk about lowering the bar.
Story from SavannahNow.com:
Democrats now have 49 seats, with two independents who vote with them.
Republicans hold 49 seats now, with 23 up for re-election this year, and five GOP senators retiring, giving away the incumbent advantage.
Democrats only have to defend 12 seats this year.
An eight-seat loss would be a very bad year for any party, even the party holding the White House at the end of a second term, when voters typically hunger for change. So, it's surprising for a party leader to speak in such frank terms about major losses.
Why would the number of seats matter if it's anything less than 51 and taking the majority, a circumstance Ensign describes as unlikely? By holding at least 41, the GOP would prevent the majority party from the 60 votes required to end filibusters and to push an unpopular bill to a vote on the floor through the cloture procedure.
"With 41 votes in the U.S. Senate, you can (1) block bad legislation, and (2) you can make the majority respect the minority's rights. And you can help craft good legislation," Ensign said. "If the Democrats were able to get to 60 votes - literally even if they get to 57-58 votes because they always seem to pick off a couple or three Republicans on a lot of votes - and if they win the White House ... they will be able to do pretty much whatever they want."
In other words, the Republicans would be unable to continue their obstructionist campaign.
In reality, however, there are a number of conservative Democrats who would putatively take some of those Senate seats, so the phrase "do pretty much whatever they want" is really just fear-mongering. Still, much of what we have seen for the past six months (at least) are straight Party-line votes by the Republican senators on issues that can easily be turned against a senator up for election. The GOP has chosen to sacrifice senators in order for Bush to prove that he's still "relevant". This also means that the next mid-term elections will see roughly the same number of Republican senators up for election, who will still presumably be running on the Bush agenda, since that's what got them elected in the first place.
Kel at The Osterley Times covers the doubts among other Republicans over McCain's campaign.
She also has video of McCain claiming that Putin is the President of Germany.
The Democrats are also making gains in fund-raising.
Al Franken has won the DFL nomination to take on Norm Coleman in Minnesota.
John McCain says that the Constitution states that America is "a Christian nation".
McCain says, "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." He continues, "I think the number one issue that is in the selection, that which people should make a selection of the president of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'"
The United States Constitution, of course, specifically states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
Recall that this "Christian nation" line was the basis for the right-wing freakout over a Hindu prayer being made in the Senate. Recall also that fundamentalist evangelical Christianity only came into existence in America more than a century after the Constitution was signed and ratified. McCain is now using the metaphorical corpses of the Founding Fathers as ventriloquist dummies for an argument in favour of something that they never advocated or were aware of. McCain is using the term "Christian" as interchangeable with "born-again fundamentalist Christian", which is a gross distortion and nothing near "straight talk". Indeed, in many of the former colonial states such fundamentalist views would have been punished as heresy, but now we are being led to believe that evangelical Christianity was not only in existence at the time, but also accepted and prevalent.
