GOP FUNDRAISING APPEALS. Speaking of The New Republic, Michael Crowley has a very good post over at The Plank where he excerpts a chunk of text from the latest National Republican Senatorial Committee fundraising letter. It has an astounding eight paragraphs sounding the alarm about the investigations and imminent impeachment proceedings the GOP says Dems will launch if they take back one or both houses of Congress. As Crowley notes, "it's pretty clear what Republicans--who, after all, have no other good choices--want this election to be about." Obviously this is meant to get the bucks flowing in from the conservative base, but the question is, Will it? When it comes to sending checks, conservatives are unpredictable and aren't always willing to be snookered by the latest con hatched by GOP fundraisers. Last year, Republicans loudly predicted that an avalanche of money from the right would descend on New York to stop Hillary from winning reelection and, hence, from subsequently winning the White House. Yet the effort to raise money this way has been an enormous, embarrassing flop. Right now Karl Rove is reportedly hard at work hatching schemes designed to mobilize base turnout, but still, you have to wonder whether even Republicans can sense the desperation emanating from letters like this -- they're almost a tacit acknowledgment that there are few if any actual Bush initiatives worth preserving, so the only thing left to preserve is the political hide of the man himself. And with numbers like this AP poll floating around -- which says that even 31 percent of conservatives want Republicans out of power -- it's anyone's guess whether saving the President's skin is enough to get conservatives to vote in the numbers the GOP needs, let alone to send money.
--Greg Sargent
