Karl Rove is aiming for victory by the skin of his teeth. When Bush came into office in 2000, the Washington Post reports, he set out an election plan for 2004 that included Republicans winning over minorities, and all those it failed to sway in 2000. But it didn't turn out that way.

...He laid out what amounted to his early game plan for reelecting President Bush in 2004: improving the party's performance among blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, union households and "wired workers" of the technology world. Bush won about 8 percent of the African American vote in 2000, and Rove insisted that number needed to be pushed higher.

Back then, Rove did not strive simply to produce a convincing victory but to create a permanent Republican majority. Now, a little more than two weeks before the election, the Bush-Cheney campaign would be happy to eke out the barest, skin-of-the-teeth GOP majority, and aims to cobble it together by turning out every last evangelical Christian, gun owner, rancher and home schooler -- reliable Republicans all. It looks like the opposite of Rove's original dream.

This election well may be Karl Rove's nightmare: