Word is getting around that the Republicans might be deliberately sabotaging their chances in the 2006 elections (a possibility I speculated about earlier in strategic disgust).

But seriously, might there be a strategic surrender (or, say, a strategic leaking of a strategic rumor of a strategic surrender) in the works? Or might this be a little like the well-known phenomenon of someone who knows his cause is lost claiming that he meant to lose all along? Whether it's strategic or not, it's more complicated than it looks.

Especially if we play the extrapolation-from-previous-races game.

Via Glenn Reynolds, Gay Patriot discussed the 1994 deja vu predicament in a post titled "1994 all over again? Wasn’t it 1980 all over again in 2004?"

Democrats who are now saying it’s 1994 all over again should bear in mind that, in the last days of the 2004 campaign, many were saying it was 1980 all over again, a year when a challenger would come from behind to oust the incumbent president of the United States.

(Republicans, of course, took the House in 1994, and then the Democrats won the White House in 1996.)

The problem with these theories is that there's also a possibility that the right wing might want Hillary in the White House.

Would Republican conservatives deliberately interfere with their own deja vu -- possibly under a double reverse deja vu theory?

Such a thing would be an unprecedented and dangerous strategy, but it would certainly confound their enemies.

For it to work, I think they should simply announce publicly that they want Hillary to be president.

Come on, boys!

(Rupert Murdoch has already given you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth....)

UPDATE: Here's Peggy Noonan:

It may take a defeat in November for the GOP to unlearn the lessons of power