Can the GOP Survive the Liberal Full Court Press

We will know on Tuesday if the GOP can survive what I call a liberal full court press. For those not familiar with this basketball term, here is a brief description: In basketball the court is divided into two halves for each side. When the other team gets the ball on your goal side, usually you run back to the goal you are defending. Sometimes you run what is called a full court press. Each of your team immediately runs to the player they are defending against and “presses” them to make a mistake and turnover the ball.

Those who want the GOP out of power have been putting a full court press on them for at least three years now. There has been a steady stream of books designed to make the GOP – specifically the Bush administration look bad. As each book comes out, members of the liberal media establishment greedily open their shows to interview the authors and highlight their handiwork.

The media has taken every whiff of everything resembling a mistake, failure, impropriety or scandal among the GOP and squeezed every last drop out of them; extending them for days and days. When these occur among the Dems, the media may reluctantly report them. However, it always is in the prism of minimizing it, casting doubt about it. Always, the news cycles are far fewer than those on the GOP side. Liberal groups have also tirelessly contributed to the full court press using the internet, media, educational institutions, unions and many more to get out a message of anger, hatred and protest at every opportunity.

The fact that the GOP is dealing with the difficulties in Iraq in a war that has become unpopular, combined with other GOP missteps has placed them in a very vulnerable position. Combined with the full court press described above, the election should be a Democrat blowout. In reality a Dem victory is predicted based on odds. There are very few GOP pickups that are polling in favor of the GOP. There are polls showing a Dem pickup. However, most hopes for a Dem pickup are still in the “toss-up” column. Those hoping and fearing a Dem victory think that the Dems will win half or more of the toss-ups. This is the basis for predictions of a Dem takeover. It is a sad statement against the Dems that they are not well beyond a prediction of a win based only on “odds”. I have posted my overall predictions here. I hope to get some individual race predictions tomorrow. On Tuesday we will know whose predictions are right and if the GOP will survive the full court press.