Lazy Gopher Pachyderm

(for an explanation of 'Jumping the Shark' click here)

It’s really too early to say for sure, but let’s tick off a few observations:

1) Patty Wetterling continues to peddle ads that even the media consider provably false or have no basis in fact.
2) Republicans are beginning to recover from the Foley fallout. Witness the Iowa electronic market; the GOP is back to the 50% mark for keeping the House after reaching a low of 43%.
3) Sen. George Allen has now grown a double digit lead in his Virginia re-election race. The ‘n-word’ smear isn’t sticking.
4) The Ohio Senate race has pulled into a tie.
5) The Missouri Senate race has pulled into a tie, perhaps with a small lead for Talent (R).
6) Over at the Daily Kos, Kos himself is not only ‘factually challenged’ on the Foley case (to put it mildly), but has lambasted former Democrat, now Independent, Senate incumbent Joe Lieberman for supporting an approach to the incident that doesn’t involve partisan ranting and raving.

And let’s add a surmise to the mix; the public, perhaps, is beginning to figure out the Democrats. They have no ideas or counter-proposals. All they have is attempted smear and scandal launched during October Surprises. Witness the last minute DUI charge against George Bush in 2000, the ‘fake-but-true’ National Guard memos hawked by Dan Rather and CBS in 2004, now the perfectly timed Foley IMs.

There’s an obvious pattern here than even the most politically disinterested American can begin to appreciate; slime seems to be the only election weapon that the Democrats seem to want to use. I’m certain that the Foley incident isn’t the only non-issue based smear the Democrats will try to ride. But it will be interesting to see if the public, even the media, have the stomach for another round like this.

If the Republicans are smart, they’ll start speaking in a unified voice about the War on Terror, taxes, economic growth, and border protection.

Let’s watch over the next week and see what happens.