When will Repub congresspeople start to jump ship?

Here is my hypothesis: At some point, if history is any guide, being on Bush's side may seem like a liability. Now, some Rep's, like Arnie of Cali, are simply keeping a low profile.

Republican members of Congress, however, want to get re-elected. Does anyone think that at least one of them will attempt to use opposition to Bush as a means to secure votes?

That way we can take Congress and the White House.

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While I love your obtuse comments, I must ask you to clarify yourself. What do you mean?

meow

but IF they do - and Bush's number are still falling,some will jump ship by end of Julyor early August.

What you will see is GOP reps quietly say "no thanks" to offers of an AWOL campaign stop in their districts. Publicly they will say that the race will hinge on "local concerns".

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the turnover is 6/30. mid august gives them six weeks to see if the "hey folks, we planned it all along." strategy has any chance.

Both House and Senate plan to adjourn from August 2-27. For House Members, that's traditionally when election season truly begins. The Senate often starts earlier, but at the same time Senators run a completely different type of campaign more akin to that of governors.

Expect House Republicans to start sniping earlier than that in order to deflate momentum from the Democratic convention in the last week of July, but this will mainly be in the form of work-related press releases and the like. No incumbent is truly safe this year, because Congress as a whole has utterly failed to complete its business in a timely matter for years now and they're not likely to get their shit together this time around, either. A lot of voters are angry and hurt, and that reflects negatively upon every Member. I'll go with Gordon Liddy's 1992 recommendation and suggest, "throw all the bums out." (That strategy eventually got him everything he ever wanted, except perhaps a cure for testicular cancer.)

I've long predicted that Friday, July 23, is going to be a "big news" day, the day when Osama is hauled out or the WMDs are found or someone takes a pot-shot at the President and is magically foiled. Congress may be forced to stay in town come August, but only if it can be managed in a way that it harms the Democrats.

If that day doesn't come, the Republicans are facing something of a disaster, and they'll have to start throwing spit-balls. Flagging popularity of the President is worth a few points for the opposition in any Congressional race, because it galvanizes people toward a straight-ticket vote.

Dirty tricks which can be employed include exploitation of the significant House majority of Republicans to prolong the legislative session in August in order to face some sort of manufactured legislative "crisis" which allows Republicans to rotate back to their home districts and campaign while Democrats must remain in DC to confront whatever divisive and controversial legislation the Republicans decide to propose in that time.

In the Senate, Frist may attempt a similar tactic, but it works less well there because many of the Dems are within shorter flying distance of DC and they have better travel budgets, and a nearly even split. Frist, despite his ideological differences with me personally, is actually a pretty decent Senate leader and might not go there.

At any rate, nobody believes that any significant legislation will pass this year. Since the President openly supports the use of Continuing Resolutions to extend fiscal spending on a starvation basis, he doesn't care if anything is appropriated before the election, and probably hopes it isn't passed at all before the election because that way nobody has numbers to pin on him.

A true nightmare may arise if a defeated lame-duck Republican Congress returns to Washington in mid-November to extract a final measure of revenge in the form of judicial appointments and punitive appropriations. Remember how we woke up one day and a wet-behind-the-ears Bill Clinton found our boys getting knocked off in Somalia? Expect much the same, if not far worse, from these guys. They may try to give us all the kiss-off by starting half a dozen warlets and crises for a Democratic Senate and President to attempt to resolve while Tom DeLay marshalls the Dick Army to war in the House.

We've increasingly relied upon the elderly but termagent Robert Byrd's eloquence and verbosity to carry us through such times in the Senate. His final redemption may come in this winter of his declining years.

will never leave. The fact that he never gets any serious opposition may have a lot to do with it.

And that won't happen because of the tax cuts (a/k/a "pay off").