Below The Beltway

Gordon Smith is a Republican Senator from Oregon and here is his rather extraordinary ad:

If that’s not a sign that the down-ticket knows that the GOP is in trouble this year, I don’t know what is.

They’re both in Alaska, ironically:
A new poll shows that the two longtime Republican elected officials from Alaska, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, face serious obstacles to winning reelection.
Stevens trails Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D), 51 percent to 44 percent in the poll, while holding fairly high disapproval ratings. While 49 percent of respondents […]

Marc Ambinder takes a look at the Senate races coming up in November and finds some not so good news for Republicans.
One seat, Virginia, he ranks as almost a dead-lock certain flip from Republican to Democratic:
Democrats are enthusiastic about their nominee, ex-Gov. Mark Warner, and Republicans are not enthusiastic about their nominee, former Gov. Jim […]

Yet another politician who leaves office, only to turn around and take the bucks from a lobbying firm:
Former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has agreed to join the lobbying law firm Dickstein Shapiro as a senior adviser, the District-based firm said yesterday.
Hastert served as speaker from 1999 to 2006. He resigned his House seat, […]

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn says that the Republican Party is beginning to look like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck:
As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more […]

Yesterday it was the turn of Members of the House of Representatives to discuss the state of the world oil market with oil executives demagogue before the television cameras:
WASHINGTON — Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz peered down at the executives from the nation’s biggest oil companies, arrayed before the House Judiciary Committee like five targets in […]

Apparently, they want to send in the lawyers:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi […]

From Republicans in New York:
After more than two weeks of damaging and scandal-filled headlines, Representative Vito J. Fossella of Staten Island has decided not to seek another term in Congress, according to several people close to him.
Mr. Fossella, 43, has been the object of intense scrutiny since he was arrested in a Washington suburb on […]

Peggy Noonan waxes pessimistic about the future of the Republican Party:
What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn’t happen in 2005, and ‘06, and ‘07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the […]

If House Republicans thought 2006, when their fraud of a leadership was voted out of office, was bad, 2008 looks to be a hell of a lot worse:
For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all […]