GOP faces collapse from Alaska to North Carolina

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- Only a week to go until Election Day, and across the United States established Republicans, particularly in the Senate, are fighting for their electoral lives as polls increasingly forecast a Democratic Party rout next Tuesday.

It didn't help the Republicans that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, 84, was convicted Monday on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in election gifts -- and is now a convicted sitting U.S. senator.

The Stevens disaster couldn't be worse for the GOP. He was the virtual senator-for-life from the state that Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin governs. Thus, his conviction automatically embarrasses her, especially coming only a week before the presidential and national congressional elections, so that the memory of it doesn't have time to fade.

Worse yet, a frustrated Palin, tired of being micromanaged by the suits around Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has started freelancing in her campaign speeches. Critics charge that she is a diva and lacks any grasp of some fundamental issues.

The vice presidential nominee talked about her wardrobe issues a day or two ago, saying she had gone back to wearing her own consignment store clothes. A McCain aide told CNN that this was off script and kept the story alive. Assignment of blame is a good sign a presidential campaign believes it's going to lose -- and lose big.

Down South, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., is in danger of losing her seat as the Democrats effectively point out she is ineffective and doesn't bother to visit North Carolina very often. As the national tide against the GOP mounts ever higher, the prospects of a filibuster-proof Senate for the Democrats with a majority of 60 seats out of 100 could rest on the campaign of a comedian in Minnesota. Al Franken is running hard for the Dems there, and he could win. Republican losses in the House of Representatives are expected to be in the 25 to 30 range.

All this before the ink on the paper of former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan for a permanent Republican majority was barely dry. And where is ol' Tom, the once fearsome "Hammer" of Congress, these days?

What happened to the Republicans to bring them to this poll-predicted doorstep of inconsequence? Was it their plans? Was it their execution? Did they bite off more than they could chew?

It certainly wasn't the marvelous record of the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress. Its approval ratings have dropped to 10 percent in some recent polls, and across the board the congressional Dems' approval ratings remain derisory.

Above all else, it was the great financial meltdown and the fears of a coming, long and deep economic recession, or worse, that buried the Republicans.

Until Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson let Lehman Brothers go under on Wall Street just a few short weeks ago, McCain was actually doing well in the polls. He had energized his conservative base by picking Palin and was focusing effectively on the lack of foreign policy and national security experience of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

But McCain and Palin have both proven utterly inarticulate and unconvincing to crucial centrist independents and swing voters on coming up with any plausible policy to ride out, let alone recover from the coming recession. And it's hard to pin the financial disaster on the Democrats, since the Republicans have run the U.S. government for the past eight years and the House and Senate for almost all of the 12 years from 1994 to 2006. The lack of any prudent or responsible financial regulation of Wall Street investment houses and national banks came straight out of the conservative Republican playbook.

There are other bad signs for the GOP. Even if McCain is closing the gap with Obama, as at least one poll suggests, Republicans themselves clearly fear the worst, as evidenced by internal fighting and sniping.

There are arguments over the message, with some conservatives wanting to focus on abortion, gay marriage and immigration, while party moderates and some McCain campaign strategists want to go after the economy and taxes.

Other conservatives are arguing over who should be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee, saying even if McCain wins, it should not be his call.

Political parties that have been decimated in electoral landslides routinely tear themselves apart -- usually for years, sometimes for generations. It is an even worse sign when they begin to do so before they have even lost.