Not very close, 44/53 or so (D) loss. Red blogs are crowing. They had to spend money, though.

There is a guy named Chuck Muth who calls himself a Republican campaign consultant and lives in Nevada. A friend of mine who is a retired Republican politician sends me his newsletters sometimes.

This is an exchange my friend and I had, starting with Muth describing Huckabee.

"He's a big-government nanny-stater who's soft on tax hikes, illegal immigrants, terrorists and convicted rapists."

My response began: Ed Schultz says that in 2008, people have their own list of problems and they are looking for the candidate who has the best solutions. Others, including Tom Brokaw, are beginning to realize how tired the general population is about ideology---they want solutions!

~~~~~~~~ And I think that is what is causing Republicans so many problems. Those oldies but goodies (like the refrain above where there is an attempt to do Willy Horton on a Republican who scares some "conservatives") are looking as stale as any other fad beyond its time.

For all the stuff about Huckabee having positions from AIDS to other issues which play to the evangelical voters of Iowa a lot better than they would play with Blue Oregonians, he "gets it"---that the turn of the century Karl Rove/Club for Growth masters of the nasty attack ad and anti-tax ideology have grown stale. Unlike many in Oregon and national politics, he realizes that the bulk of the population are not high income people who love their tax cuts and don't care if infrastructure crumbles around them---people want health care and schools and bridges and other essentials. Huckabee calls teachers professionals with professional degrees, rather than "those awful people in the teachers union"--what a threatening concept to those who bash unions rather than proposing solutions!

I don't know much about the 5th Dist. in Ohio, but if it had been reliably Republican and the winner only got 53%, I'd color that district purple rather than red.

Sal, there is videotape of Gov. Huckabee saying in a budget crisis he would support certain tax increases. That is heresy to the "all taxes are bad" crowd, the Club for Growth, the Dick Armey types which brought us Measure 30, etc. Huckabee is doing a great service by exposing those people for their shallowness.

This morning's paper said Republicans had won Ohio's 5th since the 1930s so that some years Democrats hadn't bothered contesting it. In such a district, 53% for the winner doesn't seem like something to brag about.

<h2>Last numbers I got were 57/43, that's pretty rough. But then OR 02 was way rough.</h2>