Republicans ... guess what? ... up to no good again!

Al Franken is going to win the Minnesota Senate seat, it now seems virtually certain. Way to go, Al! I think he'll be a terrific senator.

Even some conservatives, like the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, think it's about time for Coleman to give up the ghost. But Republican senators, of course, feel differently. Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn chairs the GOP's Senate reelection campaign committee, and he has vowed "World War III" if the Democrats try to seat Franken before Coleman has exhausted his legal appeals. And that, as Cornyn acknowledges, could take years.

If you want to know what's really going on here, look at this. It is Nate Silver's rankings of the Senate seats that are up for election in 2010. There are 15 seats up -- I say seats rather than senators because some incumbent senators are retiring. Of the 15, nine are currently held by Republicans, so they have a third again as many seats to defend.

But it gets worse for them. According to Silver, the six most likely to change parties, and seven of the top eight, are currently Republican seats. So Cornyn is well aware that after the 2010 election, the Democrats, who now hold 58 seats pending Franken's arrival, could very well pass the crucial 60-seat barrier. In fact could have 63 or 64 seats, meaning that Obama could afford to lose a few moderate Democrats and still be able to pass the totality of his evil, Bolshevistic agenda!

So Cornyn knows that the stakes are enormous. Obviously, I write all this with the asterisk that it's impossible to know how the political winds will be blowing in November 2010, and maybe they'll be blowing in the GOP's direction. But if not, then the GOP is in big long-term trouble.

"World War III" means some specific things: filibustering Obama's judicial nominations, for example; maybe even shutting down the Senate completely. Would the Democrats be doing the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot? With regard letting their candidate pursue all his legal options, yes, probably. With regard to threatening to stop doing the nation's business -- no, they would not.