WASHINGTON — President Bush was hosting lawmakers in the Oval Office last week when he asked House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to size up GOP prospects in the midterm election.
When Boehner said he had already written off some Republican House seats, naming one in the South, Bush protested loudly and called in his chief political advisor. Karl Rove entered on cue with an armful of charts to prove that the seat was still in play and that the party could hold on to its House majority.
"Thanks for the information," Boehner responded.
The exchange illustrates the dual mood of Republicans in the final week before election day: Though there is pervasive fear that the party will lose control of Congress, a cadre of die-hard optimists is refusing to wave the white flag.
They point, like parched travelers spying water in the desert, to a few recent developments that could help the GOP in the waning days of the campaign.
They delight in this week's gaffe by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who made a joke that seemed to insult U.S. troops in Iraq. The GOP Senate candidate in Maryland is running a surprisingly strong campaign. Some of the party's most endangered incumbents, such as Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds in New York and Sen. Conrad Burns in Montana, are battling back in the polls.
And some analysts are no longer writing off GOP chances of holding on to seats in Texas and Florida that were vacated when scandal-scarred Republicans Tom DeLay and Mark Foley quit the House.
Bush on Thursday was in Billings, Mont., campaigning for Burns and attacking the Democrats, who he said were undermining the Iraq war effort.
Senior party officials, including Rove and Bush, insist that Republican fundraising and voter-mobilization advantages -- or some 11th-hour surprise -- will preserve their Senate majority and keep GOP losses below the 15 seats that would give Democrats control of the House.
"The Republicans are going to make a great goal-line stand," said GOP pollster Whit Ayres.
Tactical optimism?
Many strategists in both parties dismiss that kind of talk as a Pollyannaish effort to keep GOP voters from being so discouraged they stay home on election day. The fact that Republicans are fighting so hard in some of the country's most conservative regions is a measure of how tough a road they face. For every seat like DeLay's that comes within reach, strategists are identifying once-safe incumbents, such as Rep. Jim Ryun of Kansas, who suddenly are in trouble.
