GOP panic over midterm elections ends at White House front door

WASHINGTON — Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the midterm elections, two people strike even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are bracing for losses of 25 House seats or more. But party operatives say Rove is predicting that, at worst, Republicans will lose eight to 10 seats — shy of the 15-seat threshold that would cede control to Democrats for the first time since the 1994 elections and likely would hobble the rest of Bush's second term.

Rove and associates believe a loss in the Senate would require Democrats to "run the table," as one official put it, to pick up the necessary six seats, a prospect the White House seems to regard as nearly inconceivable.

The Mark Foley page scandal has panicked many Republicans, but Rove professes to be taking it in stride. "The data we are seeing from individual races and the national polls would tend to indicate that people can divorce Foley's personal action from the party," he said Thursday.

The official White House line of supreme self-assurance comes from the top down. Bush has banished talk of losing the GOP majorities. Come January, he said last week, "We'll have a Republican speaker and a Republican leader of the Senate."

The question is whether this is a case of justified confidence — based on Bush's and Rove's electoral record and knowledge of the money, technology and other assets at their command — or of self-delusion. Many Republicans suspect the latter. Three GOP strategists with close ties to the White House flatly predicted the loss of the House, although they would not do so on the record for fear of offending senior Bush aides.

To Rove and the small cadre of operatives who have been at his side throughout the administration, confidence flows from a conviction that a political operation that has produced three consecutive national victories is capable of one more, despite voter disaffection with Iraq and GOP scandals.

There have been few surprises revealed in the Bush-Rove playbook, which seems little changed over the past four years. It includes tapping the powers of incumbency, mobilizing Christian conservatives and others in the GOP base, and seeking to polarize the electorate around national security and taxes. A massive effort to raise money by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush seems to be paying off.

The Republican National Committee also is planning another big get-out-the-vote drive in the final three days before the election. Rove thinks many polls in individual House and Senate races understate what he expects to be a GOP advantage in turnout, according to one party strategist who has heard him discuss the midterms.