Is the GOP headed for further failure in 2008, despite the best efforts of Democrats to throw away their own prospects (and our country's security)? The omniscient Instapundit says maybe so:
Democrats -- who mostly made other issues than the war their priority in the '06 election and who lost (Ned Lamont, anyone?) when they put the war up top -- are now claiming that the elections were a mandate for surrender. Republicans may be tempted to endorse the idea that the elections were a referendum on Iraq, too, because that would get the GOP Congress off the hook for its miserable performance on, well, just about everything else. In fact, however, the elections were very close, and regardless of the war the GOP could have at least retained the Senate with only a very modest improvement in performance -- an improvement almost no one was willing to make....[T]he GOP delegation is, for the most part, just as corrupted as the Dems -- and they managed to get that way faster -- and there's no longer any stomach for challenging the status quo.