Stuart Rothenberg is now saying that the Democrats might be poised for a "blowout" of the GOP next month - the operative word in Rothenberg's piece is, of course, the word "possible"...it is possible the Democrats may crush the GOP. Its also possible that pigs may fly.

In contrast to the doom-and-gloom for the GOP, we are getting some indicators that Foley is having either no effect, or a net positive effect for the GOP. From NPR:

The scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) contact with congressional pages seems to strike at the heart of the Republican campaign on moral values. But the case does not appear to be having an effect on a small group of voters contacted by NPR who consider morality an important political issue.

And from NRO's The Corner:

Your reader is right , at least anecdotally among my circle of conservative friends. Though I live in the DC area, I work in the private sector in and am pretty representative of the economic (non evangelical) wing of 'conservatism'. To those of us in the real world, the idea that this goes beyond Foley himself and is being used to try to bring down the entire majority is absurd. I would be more dissapointed to know that Hastert even knew this backbencher was 'overly friendly.' He has bigger fish to fry than babysitting some flake from Florida in my caucus. A lot of my friends who were pretty down on this election and Congress in general have started talking politics for the first time in months. And the topic is how the media is exploiting this to help the Dems. I am certainly more fired up than I have been in a very long time. Somebody had a comment that this is a perfect moment for the 'mommy' party. Maybe, but I hate the mommy party.

Anecdotal evidence is pretty weak, but this bit from NRO looms larger because we've also got reliably liberal NPR finding that GOP attitudes are not being crushed by the Foley scandal. It is also noted that Foley isn't leading the news qutie as much - probably because of the weakness of the accusations, plus some likely skeletons in Democratic closets over just how this scandal emerged just a month before the mid-terms.

Point blank, we will not elect Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid because one Florida GOPer turned out to be grossly immoral. For the Democrats to win, they will still have to figure out a way to convince people to vote for them, and they aren't even making a stab at it. They are replaying the GOP's 1998 strategy - smear and scandal-monger and then sit back and wait for the votes to fall in to your lap. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Someone please do a poll of likely voters in the 30 most competitive House seats and see what is happening - if we don't get a poll on that by Wednesday, then we can rest assured that the Foley affair has had no negative effect at all.

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