My God, it’s a bloodbath.

No, not Iraq. That’s horror, tragedy. I’m talking about the way the press is turning its hacking, slicing knives on the White House for the pitiful ‘stay the course’ debacle. The Times and the Post are holding a veritable northeast corridor schadenfreudethon.

Say Ruttenberg and Cloud: “The White House said Monday that President Bush was no longer using the phrase “stay the course” when speaking about the Iraq war, in a new effort to emphasize flexibility in the face of some of the bloodiest violence there since the 2003 invasion.”

Flexibility? I thought it was ‘stay the course’ versus ‘cut and run’. One or the other. Who heard of ‘flexibility’? That sounds so friggin’ John Kerry.

Now let’s spend a little more time with Peter Baker in the Post …

But the White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.” A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. Democrats have now turned “stay the course” into an attack line in campaign commercials, and the Bush team is busy explaining that “stay the course” does not actually mean stay the course.

Instead, they have been emphasizing in recent weeks how adaptable the president’s Iraq policy actually is. Bush remains steadfast about remaining in Iraq, they say, but constantly shifts tactics and methods in response to an adjusting enemy. “What you have is not ‘stay the course’ but in fact a study in constant motion by the administration,” Snow said yesterday.

Political rhetoric, of course, is often in constant motion as well. But with midterm elections two weeks away, the Bush team is searching for a formula to address public opposition to the war, struggling to appear consistent and flexible at the same time. That was underscored by the reaction to a New York Times report that the administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to disarm militias and assume a larger security role. The White House initially called the story “inaccurate.” But then White House counselor Dan Bartlett went on CNN yesterday morning to call it “a little bit overwritten” because in fact it was something the administration had been doing for months.

Struggling indeed. ‘Cut and Run’ lacks nuance. And after, what, 18 months of hearing how timetables will embolden the terrorists, it turns out we’re giving the Iraqis timetables.

I really hope the Democrats have maybe 20 kids working the Nexis-Lexis accounts tonight digging up quotes from every hapless member of Congress the White House got to walk the plank with this nonsense last summer (if you find a good one, send it in. And for the best two or three entrants we’ll send out prized TPM mugs!)

There’s a lesson here amid the cackling though, one which may be grimly echoed in our own departure if the country doesn’t force the president’s hand and prevent his ego from being the guiding force in our policy. Strategic retreats are often the choice of wise leaders, shrewd generals. Having the clarity of vision to see the difference between the possible and the desirable can often allow you to change course early and avoid a debacle later. Here you see the White House which has banged away at ‘stay the course’ and ‘don’t question the policy’ for like two years now and suddenly at the crunch point they’re bailing out. Or trying to bail out — but now they really can’t. The White House political czars look like nothing so much as those panicked embassy workers and refugees on the compound rooftop clamoring to get one of the last seats on those final helicopters out of Saigon. Same amount of planning, about as much dignity.

Like I wrote earlier today, the president has run this war like a confidence game. And as you would expect, that’s led to a bubble. The support is tough but brittle. Any move off the absolutes, with us or against us, stay the course vs. cut and run, and the whole thing starts to crack. Once the White House comes out for pragmatism and flexibility, that leaves them perilously close to embracing reality itself. And that, of course, is like the kryptonite of Bush’s superherodom. After that, the deluge.

So, while Democrats look poised to take back at least one house of Congress, we all know that this is in spite of the fact that they’re relying on opposition to President Bush rather than on putting forward a positive program of their own, right?

Please.

Seldom has Washington conventional wisdom been a more obedient handmaiden to historical illiteracy.

Let’s say this once and for all, after a deep breath and for the record: In US politics, in off-year elections with unpopular incumbents it is always that way. Always. Hear it again, always that way.

Consider a few examples: the 1946 (Truman), 1974 (Nixon) and 1994 (Clinton) mid-terms. There are a few others that come close. But these are the three big wave elections of the New Deal and post-New Deal eras. In each case, the winning party ran overwhelmingly and almost exclusively on opposition to the sitting president of the opposite party and — in two of the three cases — the congressional leadership.

The 1946 election came amidst post-war economic adjustments, inflation, labor unrest, rising accusations that Democrats and the Truman administration were ‘soft on communism’. Republicans were itching for power after fourteen years in the wilderness and the coutnry was disenchanted. The whole election was anti-Truman, anti-New Deal, anti-Democrats.

The 1974 mid-term, the Watergate election. Speaks for itself. Anti-corruption, secrecy, anti-Imperial presidency. It was all about opposition to President Nixon.

And 1994, finally an election the great majority of us have a living memory of. A positive agenda? Please. The 1994 election was an anti-Clinton election, full-stop. Against Clinton’s health care plan, which was already a dead letter, against the tax increase. Against. Against. Against. The Republicans, to their tactical credit, went to great pains to avoid putting forward any substantive agenda. The ‘Contract with America’ was just a campaign stunt that only really became a big deal after the election.

Remember some of these great broad vision planks from the Contract.

#6 “No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.”

And who can forget #7 “Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.”

The real heart of the Contract was that it included no mention of any of the major policy positions Republicans favored. No mention of the repeal of the 1993 Clinton tax hike, no mention of health care reform, no mention of Social Security privatization. It obfuscated all the big policy issues in favor of a list of poll-tested bromides.

It was an anti-election as mid-term congressional election always are. This isn’t to say that that is good or bad, simply that it is built into the structure of American politics. It’s the norm.

Uh-oh (just off the AP wire)…

Thomas Rankin, the Libertarian running for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat, said Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., threatened to slap him after a televised debate.

During a debate Sunday that also included Democrat Gary Trauner, Cubin and Rankin had a testy exchange over campaign contributions Cubin received from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair, said Monday night in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that the confrontation occurred immediately after the debate.

“My aide and I were packing up to leave the debate, and Barbara walked over to me and said, ‘If you weren’t sitting in that chair, I’d slap you across the face.’ That’s quote-unquote,” Rankin said.

It’s not easy being corrupt. But the pressure does seem to be getting to them.

Here’s Barbara’s campaign website.

Facing a federal investigation, a Senate appropriations “cardinal” ponders a day without earmarks. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Art Brodsky checks in on Net Neutrality.

California Republican caught red-handed in voter suppression scheme. And boy, is his lawyer making a valiant effort to spin his way out.

You remember Peter Roskam, the GOP candidate in Illinois’ sixth. He recently earned national headlines for suggesting that Dem opponent Tammy Duckworth, the Iraq veteran who lost both her legs in Iraq and opposes the war, wanted to “cut and run” from Iraq.

Now Roskam has brought a high-profile proxy into the district to do the attacking for him, and the Roskam surrogate accuses Duckworth of advocating “retreat.”

Majority Leader Boehner (R-OH) says no, the president’s wrong. It’s one or the other …

“Look, you have got one of two options. We can pull out, walk away and watch everything that we’ve worked for and the Iraqis worked for fall apart and watch pure civil war break out, or we can stay the course. . . . As difficult as the problems are on the ground, it is either one of two options.”

Dohh! That was from July.

Sorry.

Wow. The senate is really down to the wire. A raft of new Mason-Dixon polls just came out. Corker (R) over Ford (D) by two, Tester (D) over Burns (R) by 3, McCaskill (D) over Talent (R) by three. See them all here.

Ahhh, right on time. The first Nancy Pelosi Barney Frank radical homosexual agenda radio spot from a House Republican nearing forced retirement.