The Blowout Belt

...Democrats could gain enough seats in these five states alone to make their takeover of the House of Representatives a certainty...

...And though President Bush won 62 percent in Hostettler's district in 2004 and remains relatively popular here, the congressman has spurned a Bush visit...

...But while they are a powerful force among Republicans in the South, prairie, and West, they are in short supply in the North...

...His opponent, Brad Ellsworth, is one of the least liberal Democratic House candidates this year...

...But when threatened, moderates can be mean...

...If only one of them loses, that will be a victory for Republicans...

...It's the only state where a weak economy trumps the war in Iraq as the worst issue for Republicans, who have had other problems here besides...

...His opponent is an eccentric ex-Republican businessman named Jack Davis...

...He's raised little money and is likely to be outspent by his Democratic opponent, Evansville sheriff Brad Ellsworth, by roughly 3 to 1. Hostettler has never hired outsiders to do polling, develop a campaign strategy, or create TV ads—nor has he this year...

...Lieberman, running as an independent, is a strong favorite for reelection...

...Aided by a heavy dose of TV ads, Reynolds has recovered from the Foley setback, but his reelection remains in doubt...

...For Republicans, it's a potential blowout belt...

...The party created in Northern states by Abraham Lincoln believed in fighting slavery and preserving the Union...

...Now it's not...

...The Foley affair, in which Reynolds played a minimal role, jolted his campaign: One poll showed him 15 percentage points down...

...A Democratic candidate, Michael Arcuri, for an open Republican seat got a boost from the Washington Post, which put him among "an uncommonly high number of good looking [Democratic candidates...

...Nonetheless, Pryce is threatened with losing her Columbus-based seat...

...But should Democrats actually generate the "wave" that the media are breathlessly hoping for, the Republican death toll will rise to 15 (or more) in the blowout belt...

...That leaves Hostettler as Mr...

...He has the distinction of being regarded as the most endangered House member in the most treacherous strip of the country for Republicans in the November 7 election...

...But Ellsworth isn't as far ahead—23 percentage points—as a college-conducted poll suggested...

...Another Democratic candidate, Eric Massa, was featured in an adoring piece in Money magazine about the financial sacrifice he and his family have made for the sake of his candidacy...

...Sodrel was once viewed as the most vulnerable House Republican in the nation, but he's run an effective campaign against the Democratic incumbent he beat in 2004, Baron Hill...

...But the Republican advantage in registered voters is misleading...

...Stranger things have happened in politics...

...It's possible, raising a legitimate fear that the rout at the top of the ticket will lead to blowouts in the House races...

...Two Republican congressmen in the ever-more-liberal suburbs of Philadelphia, Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick, have waged impressive campaigns but could lose...

...Deborah Pryce's friend Mark Foley is caught using his position to take advantage of 16-year-old pages," an announcer says in ads placed on Christian radio touting Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy...

...Republican House member Don Sherwood is in trouble because of an affair with a woman who says he choked her...

...Pennsylvania...

...This is still another reason for the disproportionate number of vulnerable Republicans in the Connecticut-to-Indiana belt...

...Liberal Chris Murphy says: 'No, apply for a court order even if valuable time is lost.' Chris Murphy—wrong on security, wrong for America.'" Simmons is given the best chance of winning, Johnson second, Shays third...

...In a deal with Democrats, House seats in upstate New York were gerrymandered to give Republicans an edge...

...Johnson aired a TV ad zinging her opponent, Chris Murphy, for insisting that NSA eavesdropping on phone calls by suspected terrorists should be done only under a judge's order...

...There can be no doubt that the current political climate in Ohio is poisonous for Republicans," the letter said...

...A rule of thumb in politics is that all college polls should be disregarded...

...Arcuri's friends "tease him about his fashion-magazine persona...

...A visit to his district by Bush probably wasn't enough to save him...

...George Pataki, retiring as New York governor after 12 years, leaves behind a shrinking state party bereft of competitive statewide candidates...

...Let's look at the five states: *Connecticut...

...He's pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-Marriage Protection Amendment...

...It afflicted even the great presidents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (loss of 72 House seats in 1938), Dwight Eisenhower (loss of 13 Senate and 48 House seats in 1958), and Ronald Reagan (loss of Senate control in 1986...

...If Republicans close the campaign with a strong finishing kick, they could limit their losses in the five states to 5 seats...

...They are now the most reliable Republican voters...

...Hostettler has been behind before...

...His district sits within a fiveFred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...

...It became an establishment party, thriving on power and patronage...

...Of course, nothing is ever assured in politics...

...Not much...

...But to suggest that Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state, is a helpless victim burdened only by his [Republican] brothers and sisters is absurd...

...Worst of all, Ohio lost more than 210,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2005, and its unemployment rate is a full percentage point above the national average...

...Again, a loss of only one seat in Ohio would please Republicans...

...So does freshman Republican Mike Sodrel in southern Indiana...

...Actually Indiana is unfailingly Republican only in presidential contests...

...Governor Bob Taft pleaded guilty to failing to disclose a gift, an innocuous but highly publicized misdemeanor...

...His supporters seem to be out of the reach of pollsters...

...And that was when the political environment was favorable to Republicans...

...Should he pull this off in a political climate as bad as today's is for Republicans, it would signal that the Democratic dream of sweeping Republicans out of dozens of House seats is not to be...

...The other was to privatize the Indiana Toll Road, leasing it to a Spanish-Australian joint venture for $3.8 billion...

...A quite attainable goal is 10 pickups...

...state stretch of territory—from Connecticut, through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and ending with Indi-ana—that Republican pollsters and Democratic consultants alike expect to be the most fertile ground for Democrats to pick off Republican House incumbents...

...That placement was painful to "grieving families," "insulting," and, worse still, "insensitive to the people of the nation...

...All the reasons behind the anti-Republican mood nationwide also apply in the blowout belt...

...The midterm congressional election is two weeks off, and this is his lone public event of the day...

...In a bad Republican year like 2006, such a party has little pull with average voters, Norquist says...

...All three turned out to be tough campaigners...

...Hostettler is upset...

...Blackwell trails Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland by a mile...

...Ohio...

...And he's signed a pledge not to vote for any tax increase...

...Five open seats where Democrats are leading are Mark Foley's in Florida, Jim Nussle's in Iowa, Tom DeLay's in Texas, the Arizona seat along the Mexican border, and a Colorado seat in the Denver suburbs...

...The Blowout Belt The most vulnerable Republicans are found in a five-state swath, from Indiana to Connecticut By Fred Barnes Evansville, Indiana Republican congressman John Hostettler is standing, a bit stiffly, in front of the federal building in Evansville...

...A related factor is the emergence of a Republican voting bloc of religious conservatives who make up more than 40 percent of the party's electorate...

...Tom Reynolds, as House Republican campaign chief, looked at Ohio last summer and called it "ground zero...

...The myth about Indiana is that it's a Republican state with solidly Republican House seats...

...Daniels, who's not up for reelection until 2008, became a drag on the Indiana Republicans running this year...

...In fact, he usually trails in opinion polls and then wins...

...More likely, they will merely blunt Democratic momentum in the closing days, limiting Democrats to a pickup of 10 seats...

...The war in Iraq is unpopular...

...Yet they show up as volunteers on Election Day and turn out a larger-than-expected Hostettler vote...

...He contrasts Lincoln Republicans with Reagan Republicans in southern, prairie, and western states...

...Republican embarrassment will be greater still if Eliot Spitzer is elected governor and Hillary Clinton reelected to the Senate with more than 70 percent of the vote...

...What can be said to sugarcoat the status of a party that will lose the three top statewide races by lopsided margins and as many as four House seats...

...His approval rating has dipped below 20 percent...

...If she wins, her congressional salary might be tapped to pay off debts...

...In Pennsylvania, Republicans picked an untested, ex-professional football player, Lynn Swann, to run for governor, with predictably negative results...

...If Democrats manage this, all they will need to take control of the House is to win five open seats held by Republicans...

...The Republican party that grew up in those states in recent decades was based on conservative beliefs...

...To use Norquist's term, those voters are Lincoln Republicans, unreliable in a pinch...

...Three House Republicans are now in jeopardy, each of them in a classic swing district...

...Chris Chocola's seat in South Bend was Republican in the Reaganite 1980s and Democratic in the Clintonian 1990s...

...The state lost approximately $10 to $12 million invested in rare coins through a prominent Republican coin dealer...

...So it would be a surprise but not a total shock if Hostettler eked out another victory...

...And there's the six-year itch, the inclination of voters after a half-dozen years of a presidency to turn against the party in the White House...

...Republicans hoped a liberal third-party candidate would siphon off Democratic votes and allow Senator Rick Santorum to win a third term with less than 50 percent of the vote...

...His sister, Karen Hammonds, is his campaign manager...

...All three are vulnerable in a state with a weakening Republican party...

...One was to impose daylight saving time throughout the state, which previously operated under a mixed bag of time standards...

...Indeed, Democrats have mounted few serious challenges this year in the South, where Reagan Republicans are strongest...

...Republicans are strong in the state legislature, but the truth is that Pennsylvania is basically a Democratic state and becoming more so...

...With neither party dominant in 2006, Chocola faces a tough fight to win a new House term...

...New York...

...When Shays's Democratic foe, Diane Farrell, brought in Massachusetts senator Teddy Kennedy, Shays raised Chappaquiddick: At least House Speaker Denny Hastert, blamed for tolerating Foley's flirtation with Capitol pages, hadn't plunged his car into the water and left a dead woman behind...

...The suggestion is that Pryce knowingly tolerated Foley's misconduct, an implication for which there is no evidence...

...Bush's reelection campaign made a Herculean effort to win Pennsylvania in 2004, but John Kerry took the state 51 to 48 percent...

...This was initially seen as a likely graveyard for Republican moderates, specifically House members Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson, and Rob Simmons...

...Congressman Bob Ney pleaded guilty to accepting favors from lobbyist Jack Abramoff...

...And just last week, the chief of staff to Governor Bob Taft attacked Ken Blackwell, who's running to succeed Taft, in a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal...

...Grover Norquist, the conservative Washington operative, has a compelling theory about declining Republican prospects in the blowout belt...

...The national media have done their part to promote Democrats...

...Those states have been dominated by "Lincoln Republicans," he says...

...The Republican Senate candidate, Alan Schlesinger, will be lucky to get 10 percent of the vote...

...Hostettler's on-my-own approach may prove foolhardy this time around...

...While the mainstream media have huffed and puffed about nasty Republican campaign ads, they've ignored the cheap shot taken at Deborah Pryce, a member of the House Republican leadership...

...Shays, like Senator Joe Lieberman, has bravely stuck to his pro-Iraq war position (with modifications...

...A loss of two House seats is probably the best Republicans can do...

...Scandals have ripped apart Ohio Republicans...

...The Republican candidate to replace Ney, state senator Joy Padgett, filed for personal bankruptcy after her and her husband's personal and business financial records were seized...

...The president has lost support, as evidenced by his low job approval...

...He is a campaign oddity...

...But the Green party candidate was ruled off the ballot...

...Hostettler says the newspaper should apologize...

...All the stories are blotted out but one—a short piece, little more than a squib, about Hostettler's receiving the Homeland Defender Award from a group called 9/11 Families for a Secure America...

...Once those goals were achieved, it had no ideology, no set of firm beliefs...

...Vulnerable...

...Even supposedly entrenched Republicans like Tom Reynolds, who heads the House Republican Campaign Committee, are vulnerable...

...Beside the portable podium is a blowup of the obituary page of the Evansville Courier & Press from nine days earlier...

...It was a peculiar event, even for Hostettler...

...Just as vulnerable is Republican Curt Weldon, whose home was recently raided in a federal investigation of his role, if any, in steering contracts to his daughter...

...The economy, strong as it is, hasn't produced a feeling of prosperity...

...He switched parties after being silenced at an upstate appearance by Vice President Cheney, during which he had been complaining noisily about the Bush administration's free trade policy...

...In Indiana, Republican governor Mitch Daniels has taken two bold and probably necessary steps that have backfired politically...

...If Republicans lose only a single House seat in New York, which is still possible, they will be ecstatic...

...And this ideology holds Reagan Republicans together in good years and bad, Norquist says...

...Both Arcuri and Massa are slight favorites...

...And the blowout belt is a 5-10-15 matter...

...But "to date the response has been I could write a letter about how important the award was...

...Running the story on the obit page was a "callous indignity" to the families of 9/11 victims, he says...

...Yet he's pursuing reelection as if the political environment were unchanged from his five earlier reelection battles when Democrats confidently targeted him for defeat and wound up frustrated...

...Since Republicans hold all statewide offices, they're getting the blame...

...Besides, they've allowed the Ohio tax burden to become the third heaviest in the nation...

...Both are Republicans...

...In New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the Republican party is collapsing at the state office level...

...But the blowout states are also special cases, making Republican prospects even bleaker...