GOP could win control of the Senate (maybe)

With a little over 100 days to go before Election Day, the posturing has begun over which party will ultimately control Congress next January.

Last week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs royally irked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when he suggested Republicans could take control of the House — something we still think might have been a little reverse psychology aimed at scaring Democratic voters into caring about the midterms.

Today, there’s speculation, via the Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid, that the GOP could take control of the Senate. Well, maybe. The story doesn’t actually quote any Republicans putting forward this theory.

That's a notable omission considering Sen. John Cornyn, head of the Senate GOP’s campaign committee, told C-SPAN this weekend that he didn’t think his party would recapture the majority in November. While Cornyn admitted he was praying for a "political tsunami," he said the GOP's push would likely be a "two-cycle effort." In a separate interview with "Meet the Press," the Texas Republican wouldn’t even indulge how many seats he think the GOP might win this November. None of these quotes are included in the WSJ story.

So who is making all of these predictions to the Wall Street Journal? Mostly Democrats, who, it must be noted, used a lot of words like “unlikely” and “wishful thinking” to describe the GOP’s chances of winning a Senate majority this fall. "I think there is definitely a chance" of losing the Senate, Democratic strategist Gary Nordlinger tells the paper. “I wouldn't call it a probability, but there is certainly a chance.”

(Photo courtesy of Mark Strozier.)