Krugman: Republican majority will end on Election Day

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday October 12, 2006

Paul Krugman expresses his belief that absolute Republican rule in Congress is at an end in a column that will appear in Friday's edition of the New York Times.

"The conventional wisdom says that the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives next month, but only by a small margin," writes Krugman. "I've been looking at the numbers, however, and I believe this conventional wisdom is almost all wrong."

Citing recent polls, ongoing troubles in Iraq, and the "sudden realization by many voters that the self-proclaimed champions of moral values are hypocrites," Krugman foresees that "the permanent Republican majority will end in a little over three weeks."

Some still await a Karl Rove October surprise, the subject of a recent article in RAW STORY, but Krugman says that "unless the Bush administration is keeping Osama bin Laden in a freezer somewhere, a majority of Americans will vote Democratic this year."

Excerpts from the column follow...

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Here's what's happening: a huge Democratic storm surge is heading toward a high Republican levee. It's still possible that the surge won't overtop the levee – that is, the Democrats could fail by a small margin to take control of Congress. But if the surge does go over the top, the flooding will almost surely reach well inland – that is, if the Democrats win, they'll probably win big.

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No wonder, then, that until a few months ago many political analysts argued that the Republicans would control the House for the foreseeable future, because only a perfect political storm could overcome the GOP structural advantage.

But what's that howling sound? Every poll taken this month shows the Democrats with a double-digit lead in the generic ballot question, in which voters are asked which party they support in this election. The median Democratic lead is 14 points.

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No. Bear in mind that the GOP isn't in trouble because of a string of bad luck. The problems that have caused Americans to turn on the party, from the disaster in Iraq to the botched response to Katrina, from the failed attempt to privatize Social Security to the sudden realization by many voters that the self-proclaimed champions of moral values are hypocrites, are deeply rooted in the whole nature of Republican governance. So even if this surge doesn't overtop the levee, there will be another surge soon.

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