House GOP Members Have a Plan

The interesting part is not the lead paragraph in the Politico story, in which the Republicans promise to make Democrats the public face of all that is wrong with Washington D.C. No, that's fairly standard material. The interesting part is that the Republicans have a plan to protect vulnerable incumbents this time, and it seems to be working, as far as fundraising goes:

The 17 GOP members running for reelection on the campaign committee's ROMP program, designed to protect vulnerable incumbents, narrowly outraised their Democratic counterparts: Those incumbents raised an average of $274,400 for the quarter, while the 29 members on the Democrats' Frontline program raised an average of $259,000.

Take the good news where you can get it and this is great news. The Democrats had a number of lucky breaks in open seats like Tom Delay and Bob Ney where they were able to slip in Democrats that should flip back in 2008. They need to flip those seats back while protecting the seats they were able to defend this time. With the GOP Senate committee in debt, it's surprisingly good news that the house members are doing as well as they are.

Look for conventional wisdom on GOP 2008 prospects to turn up quickly.

Money and retirements remain the biggest challenges for House Republicans this cycle, Cole said. Democratic lawmakers have transferred twice as much money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as Republicans have transferred to the NRCC through the third fundraising quarter of this year.

On that note, the big news today is that Hastert is retiring early, and an open seat in Illinois is not one that Republicans should take for granted. The election will likely be February and to say it will be watched closely is the understatement of the year.