The plans to gain control of the senate started the day they learned Jeffords was going to join the Democrats to give the Democrats control of the senate.
Nearly everything Bush has done since then has been to try to get the Senate solidly into Republican control. Nearly everything Daschle has done is to try to hurt Bush while he still has the power to do so.
Bush has been raising money to take back the Senate for over a year. The Democrats haven't a clue about how effective Bush is at raising money. Clinton was the Democrat's best fund raiser because he raised large amounts from many doners. Bush takes a much different approach. Bush recruits fund raisers who raise millions eash. It is the differnce between Clinton's hand made fund raising and Bush's mass produced fund raising. Bush wrote the book on raising funds for Presidential race. He is writing the book on how to raise money for Congressional races too.
Many of you will remember that Daschle was mad as heck at the RNC spending money in South Dakota on the Senate race a couple of months back. The efforts to retake the Senate started a year ago ... not this week. In fact the goal has been to get a working 60 vote majority in the senate. That is a tall order, but Bush is going to try. That was decided the day he won the presidency.
There will be targeted adverstising campaigns done by the best. There will be get out the vote campaigns to an extent never used by Republicans before. There are efforts to neutralize the Unions efforts. The UNIONS have far fewer reasons to bust their butts to elect Democrats. They are not going to do any where near their 2000 efforts for Gore. Unions like the Teamsters and Steel workers at the local union level will not be going all out to elect Demcorats. Bush has taken the tact of not giving the Democrats base a reason to work like heck to defeat him or his people.
Any one who has spoken to Bush knows he wants to change America. In the last 100 years only the Roosevelts, LBJ and Reagan have changed America's political direction. The rest of our presidents have been domestic caretakers. To be a mover and shaker a President has to have 60 working votes in the Senate. That rarely happens. But Bush is going to try. If he fails he will be a caretaker like Clinton and 30 years from now his presidency will not be deemed important. But if he succeeds he will go down as one of the great ones.
But to move this nation a President has to get 60 percent of the public behind him. Since senators are elected by state, it takes about 60 percent support for your presidency to get 60 votes in the Senate.
The Democrats have seen their own polls. They know they must bring Bush's approval rating down to the 50's or Bush may just get it done. Even in the 50's bush may well win the Senate back, but he can only caretake unless he gets 60 votes. But major progess now would give bush a good chance to do it in 2004. A 70 percent approval rating has the Democrats scared to death. They will try ever more outrageous and gambling tactics to try to bring him down.
The problem for the Democrats is they spent all in their efforts to elect Al Gore. To do that they went to great lengths to convince the the persuadeable political spectrum that Bush was a dunce. They played him as a drunken bum ... a spoiled little rich kid. ...as very dumb person who would be a failed president. They got half the population believing that what they said was true.
The problem with making those kinds of attacks is when they fail. For if the fail to defeat and events prove the attacks were lies, the public goes the other way.
Think of the public and a candidate as as if it were a single male and female relationship. Groups react to candidates like individuals.. much like they do to potential mates. Picture Suzy Voter. She is single. She is offered a blind date. The media tells her that if she dates Bush she will regret it. Bush is blubbery, ungly, a bully, stupid, and is a drunk. She is told Gore is handsome, nice, sweet, caring and would be a good father.
But she ends up having to go out with Bush when Gore gets stuck in Florida. When she meets Bush he turns out to be handsome, caring, hard working, gentle and very sexy.
After a few dates she is really attracted to him. The media gets scared by this attraction. The media tells her he is really a very weak guy. They impress upon her that Bush is quite weak and unable to defend her. Then Osama bin BadGuy tries to attack her and Bush kicks his butt in short order.
After this has happened the media has little credibility with the lady. The more they attach her guy the madder she gets.... at them. They can't understand what has happened. Bush has a 70 percent approval rating, and attacks that should destroy him don't. Although the example uses a female and male, with the female lied to, it could just as easily be a male. When an expected blind date is suposed to be fat, ugly and stupid and she turns out to be pretty, with a beautiful figure, very smart, and supportive, it is hard for those that lied to you to make you see her in a bad light.
I have used male female relationships to illustrate my point. But this reaction happens with any human about whom you are lied to. When the people who are lied to find out the truth they will not believe the liar again.
The act of painting a person far worse than they are is what coats a politician with teflon. The demcorats and media coated Reagan with Teflon. It looks like they may have given Dubya a couple of coats too.
I hadn't seriously considered whether Bush could get 60 Senate seats. I had mostly figured they were just trying to get back a voting majority- hmmm, but that's thinking like the dems actually. The dems are the ones desperate to hold on to a voting majority in the Senate because it's the only platform they have- except the media, of course- and while the media is a powerful tool to have in one's arsenal it still can't vote on things.
But, yes, I suppose thinking to win big and long term it would make more sense for Bush to push for the big pie. It doesn't hurt if you're unsuccesful (you were campaigning anyway) and if you win you win all the marbles. If Bush succeeds in that endeavor, I suppose he would make a big push over the next two years to win California and New York. With either of those two, he would be unbeatable.
The Dems will stop at nothing. Let's stop then this November!