Campaign 2006: The Republicans' Secret Weapon

5. Spend more Republican officials estimate that at the end of August, their committees and campaigns had $235 million to spend in the two-month home stretch, a $58 million advantage over Democrats. The R.N.C. plans to lay out more than $60 million on turnout efforts and advertising vs. the more than $14 million set aside by Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) chairman Howard Dean. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, who has been critical of Dean's approach, complained at a D.N.C. fund-raising luncheon in Washington last week that the G.O.P. "is pouring tens of millions of dollars into races, and we're not matching that." House Republican officials contend that many of their Democratic challengers are so little known that they could be buried in an ad blitz. "You hit them, and they fold like a house of cards," a strategist said.

Republicans had begun to feel better about the election recently after Bush got a bump in the polls, reflecting a steady decline in gas prices and a successful effort by the White House to push national-security issues to the top of the news. But by last week G.O.P. operatives were less elated. Newscasts were trumpeting the tales of infighting in Bush's war cabinet told in Bob Woodward's State of Denial, a book full of stories about an Administration pursuing a war with no clue how to go about it. And Representative Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida, resigned after his X-rated Internet chats with teenage boys from the House page program were made public. A safe seat for Republicans was suddenly in jeopardy.

Republicans acknowledge one ominous vulnerability: for more than a decade, the party has benefited from an intensity gap. Stoked by hatred of Bill Clinton or love for George W. Bush, G.O.P. voters have been more certain to vote than Democrats--meaning that the party tends to perform better than the final opinion polls suggest. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, head of the House Democrats' campaign committee, recently told TIME that gap had counted for as much as 5 to 7 points for the Republicans. But he thinks this election year might be different. "Their voters are unhappy," he says. "They're despondent about a failed President."

White House officials also concede they aren't so sure that Republicans will be motivated to go to the polls this year. Of course, expressions of doubt on the part of senior Republicans could be part of another game the G.O.P. plays better than the Democrats do these days: the expectations game. The Republicans are, after all, in the enviable position of being able to lose a lot. As long as they end up keeping control of both houses, they still come out the winner on Election Day.