If Republicans Lose on Tuesday, There Will Be Blood:
Since we in the so-called business of so-called punditry are supposed to be Jean Dixon-esque prognosticators upon occasion, making wildly inaccurate predictions about what will probably not happen, but, boy, if it did, won't we look fucking brilliant, let the Rude Pundit toss one into the pile: if, as the most optimistic polling shows is possible, the Republicans don't win back the House of Representatives and lose a good many of the close Senate races next Tuesday, the reaction on the right will be violent. There will be a number of instances of Democratic headquarters vandalized, people who support Democrats will be assaulted, bomb threats will be called in, and there may even be an alarmingly well-organized, but supposedly grassroots and spontaneous, riot or two.
The Rude Pundit is not doing a William Kristol here (definition: A "William Kristol" is "pulling a turd out of your ass and showing it to everyone as if you just laid a golden egg when, in reality, it's just a piece of shit"). Look at the behavior of angry white people when there was a chance that George W. Bush was going to lose Florida in 2000 (which, you know, he did). The thugs in suits intimidated a legal body from completing its mandated task. And they won with just shouting and shoving.
Look at the landscape out there. The self-proclaimed rhetorical leaders of the right are already hetting up the blood of their followers. Michelle Malkin, who really ought to be caged like rabid shih-tzu, is conjuring the chimera of voter fraud. Any small instance of anyone who looks Democratic (which means, you know, black or Hispanic) doing something suspicious (which means, you know, showing up to vote) will be blown up as the complete tyrannical takeover of our democratic process by illegal alien communists. Saying that you're gonna have poll-watchers out there is also a fine voter-suppression method.
The number of incidents of violence and intimidation by the right in this election cycle have been pretty stunning, the small individual ones like the Kentucky Stomper and the big ones like the guy who wanted to shoot up the Tides Foundation. Hell, Glenn Beck is trying to walk back the violent rhetoric, saying that "on the right, [violence] instantly destroys the republic. Why? Because it forces the president to take more power and more freedoms away." Dude, you can't put the genie back in the bottle until all the wishes are complete.
Beck and Limbaugh are both pushing the power of the ballot box as the solution right now. Why? Because it seems like they're gonna win. Fuck, Sean Hannity is already referring to "Speaker Boehner." So right now they believe that the election is going to be the Republican re-ascendance, but they are planting the seeds for uprising if that fails, if, say, the cell phone factor comes into play and polls are just wildly wrong.
Then you can bet that the teabaggers and other nutzoids will start thinking that they better use their Second Amendment remedies.