I generally eschew mixed metaphors, but one has been running through my head since last Tuesday. Republicans are running around like Chicken Little with his head cut off.

Okay, so it's a mixed metaphor wrapped up in a simile. And it's not even accurate. Chicken Little screamed "the sky is falling" when it wasn't. And it's plain to see that the political sky is, indeed, falling down upon Republicans. You don't lose special elections in hard-core Republican seats when things are going well--or even not so bad.

But these are dreadful times for Republicans. They lost 30 house seats to the Democrats in 2006--and didn't win a single Democratic seat. They've just gone 0-for-3 in special elections that they should have won easily. And they face the very real possibility of losing another 30--or more--seats in the House and perhaps enough Senate seats to give Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

So Republicans have spent the week fulminating and hollering. Rep. Tom Davis, who will be retiring from his northern Virginia seat (a seat which will almost certainly flip to the Democrats), sent out a 20-page term paper. Rep. Walter Jones, an anti-war Republican whose district includes Camp Lejeune, simply stood on his tiptoes and hollered. But their point is the same: Republicans must not only change tactics but also policies.

There's no indication that most Republicans will go along with this, however. Some cling to the notion that a simple "tweaking" of the message is enough. Something along the lines of "The Change You Deserve," which was trotted out for a few hours--until lots of folks familiar with the concept of a Google search noticed that slogan was already claimed for the anti-depressant Effexor.

What's really kind of sad about that particular episode is not the unwitting plagiarism. It's the tone of the slogan itself. There's a certain Stalinesque totalitarianism to it. Read it out loud in the manner of Charlton Heston and you'll hear what I mean. If nothing else, it can be read two ways. One reading assumes the voter to be good and deserving of something better. The other assumes the voter to be a sinner in need of punishment. Given the way Republicans have meted out demonization over the past few years, voters might be forgiven if they can't figure out which is the correct interpretation.

In any case, it's a weak rephrasing of Obama's "Change We Can Believe In," which has the advantage of embracing and empowering the voter. I can't recall a time when one political party tried so hard (and so ineptly) to ape the message of the other party. I'm young, though.

Republicans are truly rudderless this election season. They can't embrace their own president, because even most members of their party think he's an incompetent fool. They can't attack the likely Democratic nominee for fear of rallying his supporters. In the special elections in Lousiana and Mississippi, the poll numbers seem to show that Republican ads linking the Democratic candidates with Obama inspired a greater Democratic turnout.

In particular, attacking Obama seems to bring out black voters in record numbers. This is why pollsters believe that Obama can win states like Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and maybe even Alabama and Mississippi. If black voters have a turnout of 75 percent or higher, Obama could well sweep the deep south. This might sound insane, but the numbers are there. Obama and Clinton have swelled the ranks of registered Democrats, and if those folks hit the polls in increased numbers and demoralized Republicans stay away, who knows how ugly election night will be for the G.O.P.

Of course, this storm could pass, even by November. Obama could make some spectacular gaffes eclipsing the "bitter" comments and the Rev. Wright episode by several orders of magnitude. The Prez could declare victory in Iraq and bring the troops home. Hillary Clinton could run as an independent candidate.

Or the Prez could invade Iran. And then the Republicans might be facing a result as devastating as the one Canadian Progressive Conservatives received in 1993. The ruling Tories lost 167 of their 169 seats and eventually gave way to a reconstituted Conservative party.

This will be a bad year for Republicans. No amount of spin or negative campaigning will stop that. But Democrats who forsee some sort of permanent majority would do well to look to the 2006 Canadian elections. The "new" Conservatives won. The sky may indeed be falling today, but tomorrow is another day.

That last is not a mixed metaphor. It's just wretched writing. I can live with that.

Jon Worley has been amused by the feathers flying this week.