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from NewsMax.com
President Bush and Karl Rove have a message for all the doom-and-gloom visionaries in advance of the midterm elections: Don’t worry.
According to the Washington Post, there is widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming elections, but Bush and Rove are “inexplicably upbeat.”
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are bracing for losses of 25 House seats or more. But the Post reports that party operatives say Rove is predicting that, at worst, Republicans will lose only 8 to 10 seats – shy of the 15-seat threshold that would cede control to Democrats for the first time since the 1994 elections and probably hobble the balance of Bush’s second term.
In the Senate, Rove and associates believe, a Democratic victory would require the opposition to “run the table,” as one official put it, to pick up the necessary six seats – a prospect the White House seems to regard as nearly inconceivable.
The Mark Foley page scandal and its fallout have many Republicans panicked, but Rove professes to be taking it in stride. “The data we are seeing from individual races and the national polls would tend to indicate that people can divorce Foley’s personal action from the party,” he told the Post.
Rove’s self-assurance may stem in part because, as NewsMax reported, he predicted last month that there would be an “October surprise” that the GOP would use to emerge victorious in November.
Bush’s political strategist also said that the final two weeks before the elections will see a blitz of advertising, and the Republican National Committee is deploying an army of volunteers to key locations to help the grass-roots effort and monitor the elections.
The RNC is offering to fly in volunteers and cover their expenses.
Rove would not reveal specifics of the “October surprise,” refusing to give Democrats anything to use against the GOP. “I’d rather let the balance [of plans for the elections] unroll on its own,” he said in a Sept. 21 NewsMax story.
According to the Post, the official White House line of supreme self-assurance comes from the top down. Bush has publicly and privately banished any talk of losing the GOP majorities, in part to squelch any loss of nerve among his legions. Come January, he said last week, “We’ll have a Republican speaker and a Republican leader of the Senate.”
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