by Ana Marie Cox

By now you've probably seen the new Republican National Committee ad, "The Stakes." It's a kind of homage to Johnson's "Daisy" ad, though less, uhm, subtle. The RNC "earned" some media coverage of the ad by saying they'd air it nationally -- usually such hysterical ads are the province of Youtube and blogs. But, as the DSCC points out, the national part of the campaign is really more notional.

Conservative bloggers have been rather smug about the spot, applauding the RNC for reminding voters what this election is "really about." We think they're half right: The ad reminds voters of what the election is "really about," but not so sure that doing so will benefit the GOP. Polls show that Americans are definitely thinking about terrorism and Iraq, but they're looking to the Democrats to do it.

IT's not that fearmongering doesn't work, it's who it benefits. What's more, there's nothing like the smell of desperation to cut through the smoke of fire and brimstone. Republicans' real weapon in cycles past was their unalloyed confidence. Today, scattered and out of synch, you can practically taste the flop sweat on this ad and there's more to come. By the end of next week, if only one Republican leader attempts to make a joke about dressing for Halloween as Speaker Pelosi, we'll be lucky. And then there's the scare tactic tried by Majority Whip Roy Blunt, who warned last week about what the Democrats had planned if they took the House: A Department of Peace, which, in the context of the war lately, doesn't sound all that bad.