More speculation on what cost the GOP the Senate

This from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

Chuck Todd: "There's plenty of evidence to suggest that President Bush may have been the deciding factor that killed the GOP's momentum in some key Senate races over the last week. One Republican consultant is convinced that Bush's last-minute visit to Missouri on behalf of ousted GOP Sen. Jim Talent did the incumbent in. According to the network exit polls, Democrat Claire McCaskill crushed Talent among those late-breaking voters who decided in the final three days (a full 11 percent of the electorate). Bush also made a last-minute trip to Montana, where anecdotal evidence indicates the president's rally for Republican Conrad Burns stopped the incumbent's momentum in Billings."

Then you have this which is also from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

The most surprising thing about last week's elections was that the conventional wisdom -- as set by the polls and political analysts -- was right on target. Even the exit polls were accurate. However, Karl Rove really thought the pollsters had it wrong.

"Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed Newsweek his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House -- enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists -- to study just how wrong the polls were."

Ya got yer basic double-whammy right there.