As we approach Election Day on Nov. 7, it seems that pollsters are moving additional once-safe GOP House seats into the toss-up category every day. This should be heartening news, except that the margins in these races are almost uniformly squishy and so could go either way when the votes are counted.

Take the case of Rep. Heather Wilson, the Republican incumbent from predominantly Democratic Albequerque, New Mexico. Her Dem opponent, Patricia Madrid, should be leading handily by now but a new poll showsthat the candidates are in a statistical tie, with Madrid at 45 percent and Wilson at 42 percent. Nine percent of voters at this late date remain undecided.

With exactly two weeks to go, there are a dozen or more races around the country in a similar position, with incumbent Republicans teetering on the edge and Democratic challengers not yet making the sale.

This positions the midterm elections perfectly for the Karl Rove “way of war.” Rove is famous for his “50-plus-1″ strategy, which eschews building bipartisan consensus in order to achieve decisive victories but rather depends on terrorizing 51 percent of the electorate into voting Republican while bitterly alienating the other 49 percent of us. It is a strategy for winning, not governing — otherwise it would be too risky to squeak by with such razor thin majorities.

Now, with the status of the election at the tipping point, Rove is almost undoubtedly ready for the coup de grace — a two-prong attack that starts with an “October” surprise on or around Thursday, Nov. 2, that launches the GOP’s vaunted get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign 72 hours before voting begins on Tuesday, Nov. 7 .

Moving the surprise so close to the election ensures that the shock value of the story will dominate the news cycles through the start of voting and prevents Democrats from launching a counter-assault.

What the surprise will be has been widely debated. We have speculated that it might be an announcement that Osama bin Laden has been captured and killed, and we have noted that a Navy strike force spear-headed by the newly retooled U.S.S. Eisenhower arrived this weekend off the coast of Iran, where it is in position to start bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

Events on the ground could countervail Rove’s efforts here and in Iraq, of course. In the Foley scandal, high-ranking Republicans including House Majority Leader John Boehner and aides to Speaker Dennis Hastert are scheduled to testify before the Ethics Committee this week — and Foley himself comes out of rehab on Oct. 27.

Some commentators suggest that the insurgents in Iraq will ramp up the violence in advance of the election. This is hard to parse because they are thriving under the Bush/GOP regime here in the United States, and it is unclear why they would do anything to help loosen control of the Republican Party in Congress.

Finally, here’s one way to guage what Republicans’ internal polling is showing as Nov. 7 approaches: If you start to hear comedian Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts begin to talk woefully bout huge numbers of seats changing hands to the Democrats — upwards of 80 or more — you can assume they are seeing a real surge and are trying to lower expectations so that if they lose just 20 or seats they can say, “See, it wasn’t as bad as we thought.”