Not only is the GOP losing special elections, it's managing to lose elections in districts where its candidates should be winning by 10 points without even campaigning,

Democrat Travis Childers won Tuesday's Mississippi special election runoff for Sen. Roger Wicker's (R) former House seat, handing Democrats the biggest of their three special election takeovers this cycle and sending a listless GOP further into a state of disarray.

Childers led GOP candidate Greg Davis 53-47 with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting. Turnout increased substantially over the 67,000 voters who cast ballots in the April 22 open special election, with more than 100,000 voting in the runoff.

Childers, who beat Davis 49-46 three weeks ago but came up just shy of a race-ending majority, joins new Democratic Reps. Bill Foster (Ill.) and Don Cazayoux (La.) to give Democrats a trifecta of upsets in conservative House districts over the last two months.

The loss could send shockwaves through the Republican Party, where murmurs about a leadership shakeup have become more and more audible.

Democrats are backing up the assertion that they remain on the offensive in the cycle following a 30-seat gain, which has historically not been the case after a "wave" election.

Wicker's former district voted 62 percent for President Bush in 2004 and, by that measure, is one of the most conservative seats Democrats have taken from the GOP over the last 18 months, including the 2006 election.

The GOP got massacred at the ballot box in 2006 and if this year isn't quite as awful, it's only going to be because the Democrats plucked so much low hanging fruit in 2006 that they're going to have to keep picking up strong Republican districts to add seats.

Let me add that it's too bad that the Republican leadership in the House may end up on the chopping block over these losses because from what I've seen, they're pretty much the only "Republican leaders" in DC who can find their own *sses with both hands. Yet, even when they do a good job, it seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the screw-ups of Bush / McCain / the Senate / the RNC, etc.

PS: What you're seeing is the result of the Republican Party's "leadership," such as it is, becoming arrogant, complacent, and coming to believe that they're so smart that they don't need to listen to the people who put them in office to begin with.