The GOP knows you don't like anchovies

FOUR DAYS before this month's special election in San Diego County to replace imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican strategists back in Washington were worried. In addition to voter discontent with GOP leadership and the looming shadow of scandal dominating the campaign, Democrats appeared to enjoy yet another advantage: More absentee ballots were being submitted by Democratic voters than by Republicans.

The advantage did not last long. Jolted to life, the GOP machinery revved into high gear as activists poured into the district. They scoured the party's computer database for sympathetic voters who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet submitted them, knocked on their doors and called them on the phone. Suddenly, thousands of additional votes had been secured, and by election day, the GOP had turned around a costly deficit -- with 10,000 more Republicans than Democrats voting absentee.

That final flurry of absentees, along with other forms of voter targeting, contributed to a surprising GOP victory that cut through the heart of the Democrats' broader 2006 election strategy. Rather than using Cunningham's criminal role in a lobbying scandal to turn the special election into a preview of how they could translate a "culture of corruption" into a national revolution in November, Democrats watched in disappointment as a Republican lobbyist won the race -- and as the Democratic candidate performed barely better than presidential nominee John Kerry had in that same district two years before.

The results in the 50th Congressional District did not merely illustrate the potential inadequacy of the Democratic strategy for the November elections; they foreshadowed a much bigger and more startling story line: That even in the face of Republican scandals, sour approval ratings, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and growing public rejection of President Bush's policies in Iraq, the Republican Party still holds the lead in the art and science of obtaining power -- and keeping it.

The fact is that over two or three decades, the GOP has painstakingly built up a series of structural advantages that make the party increasingly difficult to beat. And in the last five years, it has strengthened its hold under President Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove.