More bad news on Iraq, Abramoff details, wiretap loss and sex scandal as Republican Congress ends and campaign begins

The Republicans were feeling smug. The elaborate pantomime of idealistic Republican rebels facing down the President over torture seemed to have worked. The Republican congress had managed to have their cake and eaten it too, by loudly opposing an unpopular President while in actuality giving him exactly what he wanted - seemingly under the very noses of a dozey and compliant mainstream media.

Gas prices dropped, improving sullen voter's moods.

The word of Rove was once again to go after Democrats as being cut and run bad for security social deviants who wanted to tax away all your money. The groundwork was being laid and the narrative constructed by Disney owned ABC television and the trained monkeys disguised as journalists at Fox:

Turns out it was all Clinton's fault after all.

Even though 9/11 happened eight months into Bush's watch, even though Clinton had a left a detailed terrorism fighting plan ignored by the Bush administration, even though the Republicans had fought tooth and nail against Clinton's terrorism fighting in Somalia and Sudan and Afghanistan - despite all that: Clinton had been the one to be distracted from terrorism, had passed up chances to kill Bin Laden - directly refuted by multiple witnesses - and generally worried more about stains on dresses than security.

Never mind that this is recent history and everybody remembers the truth, some political operatives study Machiavelli, Sun Tzu or Musashi. Karl Rove studies Orwell. And Goebbels.

Then over the course of a few days the whole increasingly rosy picture fell apart.

Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida Co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus apparently sent suggestive e-mails and pornographic IMs to teenage male pages. The Republican leadership knew about it, hushed it up, even kept it from the Democrat on the Ethics committee that 'investigated' the matter. It was revealed that Foley was known for such behavior and Pages were warned to avoid him

Before that could even begin to sink in, excerpts from a book by Bob Woodward, partially redeeming some truly epic White House asskissing over the last few years, began to be released. They describe a President and a White House reducing every decision to politics, missing opportunities in Iraq and the war on Terror. The excepts reveal that everybody was calling for Rumsfeld's head, including the First Lady but Cheney told Bush to keep him rather than admit at all that mistakes had been made.

Reports confirmed extensive contact between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House.

A Republican Congressman from South Carolina called for the sterilization of the parents of law-breaking youth.

They ran out of time to ram through wiretapping legislation.

The National Intelligence Estimate proved stubbornly resistant to being obfuscated away. The conclusions were clear and unavoidable.

The polls ticked slightly upward for the GOP buoyed by low gas prices but later polls showed huge numbers of Americans believe the lower prices are politically orchestrated by the Oil companies and will be raised again after the elections.

It's been like a perfect storm for the GOP.

Even if the GOP were to hold on to one or both of the houses - still a distinct possibility when the incumbency aristocracy advantage, more money, lower gas prices, a compliant mainstream media and Diebold voting machines are taken into account - there are experts in both party's saying losing might be a blessing.

Its going to be a nasty couple of years. Military estimates predict Iraq will get even bloodier, the slow deflation of the US housing market is building steam and oil prices will rise again, don't kid yourself.

Whoever is in control, no matter how nominal a majority they have will be the focus of the public's anger as things spiral from bad to worse. If November isn't the GOP's Waterloo, 2008 may be their Armageddon.

Assuming Bush is willing to wait that long