LAT,Brownstein:GOP's Future Sits Precariously on Small Cushion of Victory

Washington Outlook
GOP's Future Sits Precariously on Small Cushion of Victory


....Measured as a share of the popular vote, Bush beat Kerry by just 2.9 percentage points: 51% to 48.1%. That's the smallest margin of victory for a reelected president since 1828....

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Measured another way, Bush won 53% of the 538 electoral college votes available this year. Of all the chief executives reelected since the 12th Amendment separated the vote for president and vice president — a group that stretches back to Thomas Jefferson in 1804 — only Wilson (at 52%) won a smaller share of the available electoral college votes. In the end, for all his gains, Bush carried just two states that he lost last time.

Another trend explains why all of this might matter to more than just historians: Throughout American history, the reelection of a president has usually been a high-water mark for the president's party. In almost every case, the party that won reelection has lost ground in the next presidential election, both in the popular vote and in the electoral college....

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Because his margin was so tight, Bush didn't leave the GOP with enough of a cushion to survive even a fraction of that erosion in four years. Even if the GOP in 2008 matches the smallest electoral college fall-off in the past half century — the 99-vote decline between Reagan in 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1988 — that would still leave the party well short of a majority.

So Bush needs a second term successful enough to break these historical patterns. That's where his gains at expanding the Republican margins in Congress could become critical. In 2002, Bush became the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 to win House and Senate seats during his first midterm election. This year, he became the first president since Johnson in 1964 to add House and Senate seats while winning another term....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook15nov15,0,5744523.column?coll=la-home-nation

hate em hate em hate em.... :grr:

really won in the first place. If it was a fraudulent election it is not the will of the people that he is there and if we do no uncover it now it will no tbe the will of the people that the GOP makes more advances in '06 either. This is different and an historical perspective doesn't matter.

hits again.

And that Small Cushion was mainly vapor votes from TS/OpScanners.

Screw patterns. History should not have been on Bush's side this year. Look what happened.

is the elephant in the media pundits' newsrooms.

Until they begin to investigate that issue, none of this analysis amounts to a hill of beans.

And if the fraud really is as entrenched as I think it is, they are truly wasting their time because there is no more "democracy" or "republic" or whatever form of representative government and they are reduced to being court jesters in a restored monarchy.

just an inept and incompetent fool.

...AGAINST Bush's record.

Bush is going to ruin America and the Republican will pretend that they're running as a Republican alternative to Bush. This will allow Bush to behave terribly while Republicans don't pay the consequences.

The Republican candidate, of course, will have loved the huge shift in wealth and power to the wealthy and powerful that Bush brings about. It's just that they'll lie to the public about whether they approved of it.

At least Brownstein isn't parroting the "huge win" story about the election. At least he is noting how small a margin Bush got. We know that part of that margin was stolen. It's easier to convince people that Bush actually lost if they don't think he won in a significant way.

majority in 2006 and really make him a lame duck. Signed the eternal optimist.