The 2006 midterm elections will be a disaster for the Republican Party -- unless a "cataclysmic event" saves the day. That's the dire warning from political analyst Charlie Cook, who predicts in his "Off to the Races" column that the GOP's expected misfortune will result from a perfect storm of three factors:
"The political climate will be extremely hostile to Republican candidates."
While Republicans benefited from turnout in 2002 and 2004, this time voter turnout will benefit Democratic candidates."
The advantage that the GOP usually has in national party spending will be significantly less than normal. Cook doesn't mince words in his column, flatly stating: "All of the traditional diagnostic indicators in major national polls taken in the past 10 days show numbers consistent with an electoral rout."
Took back up his doom-and-gloom claim, Cook cites the results of several polls that tracked respondents' opinions on President Bush, congressional races and expected voter turnout.
In one glaring example, the latest Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll, only 27 percent of respondents said the country was headed in the right direction, while 63 percent said it was off on the wrong track.
Cook rates the Democrats' chances of winning control of the House as excellent, while a Senate will be more difficult.
"In a very large tidal-wave election, as this one appears to be, it would not be unusual to see all toss-ups go to one party, along with a few out of the leaning column as well," Cook writes. "This does not mean that Republicans no longer have any chance of holding onto their House or even Senate majorities. But every day that passes between now and Nov. 7 where their poll numbers look this bad, the climb back gets incrementally steeper and more difficult."
