Thanks for posting the full

Thanks for posting the full poll results, Rocket Man. If the voters are having second thoughts about handing control to the Republicans, they’re doing a good job of concealing them. Your theory on why the Republican numbers are so high right now has merit too, it seems to me. I’ve always thought that the Republicans would profit from running advertisements on selected issues during periods when there are no races in progress. Sometimes “special interest groups” will take care of this. Recall the devastating ad campaign against “Clinton Care.” But this is the exception. Obviously, when it comes to the Party footing the bill, the costs are so high that it will always seem that the resources are better husbanded for the high election season. But suppose, hypothetically, that the Democratic stall tactics on homeland security had occurred in 2001 instead of 2002. Since the media was not about to cover this in an informative matter, wouldn’t it have been worthwhile, at both a moral and a political level, to call this to the attention of the American people through advertising? Parties can be defined during non-election years too. President Bush defined himself in 2001 under circumstances when the media had no choice but to allow the American people to notice. Under more normal circumstances, “off-year defining” will not be free, but may be worth the cost.