Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, and NRO are going overboard on a recent story by Mark Steyn. Basically, Sullivan, Reynolds and NRO are really happy because Steyn says that President Bush is going to be reelected.
Let's all remember the perils of predicting a Republican future. From ABC This Week, January 25, 1998:
COKIE ROBERTS: Well, what do you think? I mean, how -- what are the steps Bill Clinton could take to survive?
BILL KRISTOL: I don't think he can survive, because he's not -- well, he really isn't telling the truth. And I don't think anyone...
COKIE ROBERTS: OK. So he is out. So then what happens next?
BILL KRISTOL: What happens is senior Democratic leaders go to the president -- and I agree with Sam; it could be in days, not in weeks -- and tell him this is insupportable, you cannot put the country through this.
James Buckley, the Republican senator from New York, in April of 1974 was the first Republican to say publicly that President Nixon had to resign. It would be ironic if the man who defeated him in 1976, Pat Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York, stepped up and said that. But I think someone like Moynihan or Sam Nunn or Bill Bradley or a respected Democratic elder...
COKIE ROBERTS: Do you see that happening?
BILL KRISTOL:... in the next few days is going to say, Mr. President, you cannot put us through this.
[...]
GEORGE WILL: What -- what that -- what -- sooner or later Democrats are going to have their minds rolled back 24 years to 1964 when the Republican Party was annihilated because it was seemed to have been tardy in disciplining one of its own.
SAM DONALDSON: Well, I renew my question. What will President Al Gore do then?
BILL KRISTOL: He'll select -- he'll select a very respected figure as vice president, and he will have a big honeymoon. And it will -- he will actually advance legislation pretty effectively.