I first posed this question a couple of months ago on the Democratic Underground, where it was widely pooh-poohed. This was before the torture vote, before the NIE, before Woodward, and before Foley. I've tried to put it out of my mind, but my suspicions have only grown stronger since all of those.
Obviously, the Republican'ts would love to keep both the House and the Senate... but, if it comes down to having to choose, I believe keeping the Senate is more important to their long-term strategy. Have they made a determination to "give us" the House, and concentrate on keeping the Senate?
I don't mean that we shouldn't use the PagePredator Cover-up for all its worth to try and take the House, just that we should not let it overwhelm our other efforts to take the Senate. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, right?
Follow my reasoning past the jump, and let me know what you think of it.
The reason that the Senate is more important to them is, with the Senate and the Presidency, the Pubs can continue packing the courts with their extremist judges. They're close to having a majority of "their" judges on every Federal court already. Once those judges reach critical mass, it no longer matters much who controls Congress, because any laws they pass will be "interpreted" by the courts (and the Supreme Court has already shown a marked willingness to throw out any law that Congress passes). If they succeed in packing the courts, their ideology will rule for a generation.
That's what they
really want.
(Lest it has escaped your notice, let me point out that they've been very careful to appoint young judges, so when I say "a generation," I really mean it. As I've posted elsewhere, many of these judges are younger than I am, meaning that I probably won't see balance brought back to the judicial system before I die. That's not a happy prospect, for me.)
The Republican'ts know that the public mood is ugly. Americans of all stripes are beginning to feel betrayed, and they're out for blood. So the Pubs "give up" the House to satisfy the public's blood-lust, calm them down, lull them back to sleep with the illusion that they still have some say in what goes on in the government. And, hey, I'd be happy to take it. At least then we'll have a chance to do some real investigation, and perhaps stop some of the worst abuses Bush tries to perpetrate. So that's a good thing. (Although, I would add, our efforts to do so will most certainly give Pubs a rallying cry to bring back their base in 2008. Coincidentally, of course.)
I just read another tidbit that tends to reinforce my unease... Froomkin's White House Briefing today (quoting from a column by Dotty Lynch of CBS News), notes that one element of Rove's "base strategey" is "amendments against same sex marriage on the ballot in eight states - including Tennessee and Arizona, where there are very tight Senate races".
One other thing to note... If, as some people believe, some election fraud occurred in 2004, we need to be especially vigilant on that front when it comes to the Senate races. Yes, it's probably difficult to "fix" House races - there's too many of them, and too many districts to focus on. But if they did, in fact, hack the vote in 2004, a statewide Senate race could be fixed using the exact same apparatus.
So, yes, keep working to take the House. Any win there is a good win. But let's walk and chew gum at the same time, and don't let the House consume all of our attention. We need the Senate too - and I would argue, given everything I've written above, that taking the Senate is the more important task.