WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The battle for Congress rolled into a climactic final weekend with Republican Party leaders saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House, and that they were increasingly steeling themselves for the loss of at least 15 and therefore control of the House for the first time in 12 years.
Democrats and Republicans said the battle over the Senate had grown fluid going into the final hours before the elections Tuesday. Democrats said they thought they were almost certain to gain four or five seats and still had a shot at the six they need to take control.
Republicans were pouring money into Senate races in Michigan and Maryland this weekend to take advantage of what they described as last-minute opportunities, however slight, in states currently held by Democrats, while a new poll Saturday showed that Senator Conrad Burns, the Montana Republican, was tied with his challenger after a visit there by President Bush.
Party strategists on both sides, speaking in interviews after they had finished conducting their last polls and making their final purchases of television time, said they were running advertisements in more than 50 Congressional districts this weekend, far more than anyone thought would be in play at this stage.
Nearly all of those seats are held by Republicans, underscoring the degree to which President Bush and his party have been forced onto the defensive two years after he claimed that his re-election had given him the political capital to carry out an ambitious domestic and foreign agenda.
"It's the worst political environment for Republican candidates since Watergate," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster working in many of the top races this year.
As the final weekend began, the parties made their final tactical moves as candidates sparred over the war, the economy, corruption and competence and as elaborate get-out-the-vote campaigns were rolled out. At stake was not just control of the House and the Senate, but also potentially the course of the Bush presidency in its last two years and the debate over how to proceed in Iraq.
This is the last weekend of political campaigning for the candidates before Election Day. This weekend really caps a terrible week for the Bush administration. Four military papers have just called for Rumsfeld's head. Iraq has become the campaign issue for this election--in fact the issue was reinforced when 101 Americans have died in Iraq over the month of October. The U.S. also failed to track arms destined to the Iraqi security forces, and may have ended up in the hands of insurgents. Vice President Cheney even felt it was okay to dunk terrorist's heads in water. Evangelist Ted Haggard resigned from both his New Life Church and the National Association of Evangelicals after revelations of drug purchases and gay sexual relations with a male prostitute became known. And what did the Republicans try to latch on over this past week? How about an attack against John Kerry's botched joke on the president--which stayed in the headlines for about three days, and happy talk about the job market and the U.S. economy--happy talk that the American voters are apparently ignoring for the more serious issue of Iraq. And all of this can be superimposed over October's continued GOP scandals involving Mark Foley, George Allen, Jack Abramoff, North Korea's nuclear test, and even the criticisms of the Republican Party's use of extreme negative campaign ads.
With the barrage of bad news, is it no wonder that the Republicans are in trouble?
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