Now that this election is over i'm thinking of my dream ticket for 2008.

Mitt Romney for President with Michael Steele as his running mate!

Two strong conservatives both with broad appeal.

Scott has a good analysis, but it is not as bleak as he explains. Example: GA 8 and G 12 can and should be won next cycle, hey one might sneak in THIS cycle.
ALL (RED) districts, even some in IN. Republicans need to be sat down and shown what Nancy P. and Teddy K. are doing, that should bring a lot of rock solid Republicans back into camp, along with some conservative Independents. The numbers add up to re-take if MOTIVATED, if not......we're in trouble until something tragic motivates the country.
As far as Mitt being conservative...um I am stuck in this BLUE cesspool of a state called mASS. Mitt is a good guy, but conservative is a bit of a stretch. He has changed since he wants to be President, the change is for the better, but some of the crap he babbled to get elected in MA.

Since collectively we were way off on this election, how can we possibly accurately predict 2008?

Isn't that like predicting the weather 2 years from now?

'Predicting' might be a bad idea...but it's not too early to start planning...and the first step of that is to start 'predicting' which targets might be vulnerable. If the Republicans wait to start campaigning until the middle of '08 like they did this year it'll be more antacid overdoses for the RNC.

if not 08, 2010 when the new census comes out and the South gains more red districts while the north loses blue districts

You know, the funniest (in a macabre sort of way) thing is that one of the "lessons" that the "stay home" or "vote for secular regressive socialists (i.e. "democrats")" republican voters wanted to teach the republican politicians was that they wanted illegal immigration stopped.

Now we are going to have amnesty, easy paths to citizenship, and unfettered illegal immigration.

Wadda ya wanna bet that the "border fence" gets de-funded in Pelosi's "first 100 hours"? Another interesting bet would be: will the fence be defunded before or after the Iraq war is defunded in the first 100 hours of Pelosi's reign of secular regressive socialism?

Yup, thanks to Polipundit and people like him we are cutting off our arm to spite our thumb. Good plan you clowns.

BTW,

Good point jp. I expect Michigan to loose at least 2 seats and possibly more (like 4 or 5) after the 2010 census.

And since it's now considerably more likely that terrorists will nuke many of our big cities in the near future, that will effect the census numbers too and favor less densly populated (and thus less secular regressive socialist) areas.

P. Bunyan ~ It was exactly the stay-at-home-and-send-them-a-message conservatives who gave this election to the Democrats. Democratic turnout exceeded Republican for the first time since 1990. So much for our GOTV effort - and a big thanks also to the libertarians.

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Remember that even after the census, in most states it is the legislature, sometimes with the input of the governor and sometimes not, which draws a state's new districts. So a Democratic legislature which sees its state's seats reduced by two could gerrymander the districts to simply eliminate 2 GOP seats in their delegation. Reapportionment in such circumstances could result in no net gain for Republicans.

Of course, in those states in the northeast which no longer have any Republican House districts to gerrymander out, it is a different matter.