washingtonpost.com The theory is this: The building's infrastructure was actually quite sound. It was bad luck and seasonal shifts in the winds that blew out the walls -- complacent candidates, an ill-timed Mark Foley page scandal and the predictable cycles of history.

Andrew Sullivan, the conservative writer: "Shows him not to be a genius, but to be a real failure as a political strategist."

David Gergen, ex-presidential adviser: "He went off to hardliners, and that left an awful lot of moderates . . . feeling alienated."

Forbes.com Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has suggested that if Bush replaced Rumsfeld two weeks before the election, voters would not have been as angry about the unpopular Iraq war. Republicans would have gained the boost they needed, according to Gingrich, to retain their majority in the Senate and hold onto 10 to 15 more House seats.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, agreed with that assessment.

In other words, if they had just had a little time to run their mudslinging ads without the inference of the eye-popping scandals, they could have conned Ma and Pa America into voting for them again...   Them wingnuts sure are somethin' else - aint they...   - fc