Letters to the Editor
-
As Losses Mount, GOP Begins Looking in the Mirror
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002441.html?hpid=topnews
Since losing 30 seats and their 12-year stranglehold on power in 2006, House Republicans have kept asking themselves the same question: Can it get any worse?
On Tuesday, they may get another answer they won't like.
With lots of help from Washington -- including more than $1.3 million in campaign cash and a last-minute visit by Vice President Cheney -- Mississippi Republicans are desperately trying to retain a congressional seat in one of the most reliably conservative districts in the nation.
The stakes in the 1st District special election couldn't be higher, strategically or symbolically. The loss of a traditionally GOP seat to a Democrat would be the third in a special election this spring and the second in the Deep South after the May 3 victory of Rep. Don Cazayoux (D-La.).
Rank-and-file Republicans say that would force a day of reckoning for their leadership.