Republican strategists have worked their typing fingers to the bone since the election, arguing over how to fend off the collective nightmare they envision if Democrats put no brakes on their agenda.

Trouble is, nothing looks likely to work. Nothing, that is, except the one strategy that conservatives seem to be coalescing around: Begging.

Since the results of Nov. 4 have yet to take effect, few outside the Capitol - and, really, precious few even there - yet appreciate the totality of Democratic ownership of Washington, D.C.

Republicans and Democrats in Minnesota are entering a death struggle right now not all that different from the political war in Florida following the 2000 presidential election. Lawyers and activists from both sides are pouring into the Twin Cities, desperate to nudge either Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman or Democratic challenger Al Franken over the top.

Why the intensity? Because a Democratic win in Minnesota effectively hands the Dems de facto control of the entire legislative process.

With 57 Senate seats already in Democratic hands, a Franken win in Minnesota essentially assures the Democrats that the bulk of their agenda is theirs for the having. In order to hurdle the 60-vote supermajority necessary to bypass a minority-party filibuster, all the Dems will need is the help of one or two occasional friends like independent socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, semiostracized independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut or liberal Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine. It's not quite like having the entire show under a single roof, but it is a virtual guarantee that all but the most outre elements of the Dems' agenda will sail through.

A lot of economists are pointing to the self-destruction on Wall Street - the biggest post-election belly flop in stock-market history - and are claiming it is a direct response to the Democratic takeover described above. Some of that reaction is irrational, just like so much of what's happening to the financial markets.

Barack Obama has made a determined effort thus far not to become a president-in-waiting. That has included a resistance to issuing declarations of his intentions regarding economic and tax policy.

The president-elect is committed to some firm ideas that a lot of conservatives fear could stagnate the economy for years to come. But he is not oblivious to certain economic realities. However one defines that Joe the Plumber-era line about "spreading the wealth around," (as either socialism or simple fairness-ism), it is a policy that requires wealth that can be spread around. In a train-wreck environment like this one, there just isn't any.

This is the line of argument that conservative strategists are raising against the coming Democratic dominance in Washington. They are raising the specter of a long recession and begging the Dems to not make it worse.

And so we have the astonishing spectacle of seeing the likes of conservative historian Amity Shlaes urging Obama and the Democrats to resist raising capital-gains taxes by quoting (of all people) Paul Krugman of the New York Times - the liberal columnist who, to my recollection, has never before met a rich capitalist whose face he did not wish to grind into the gravel with his boot heel.

Krugman and Shlaes are of one mind in arguing that Franklin D. Roosevelt exacerbated the Great Depression with his tax hikes. And it seems the Dems may be listening. The proposed economic-stimulus package that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been promoting (half-a-trillion dollars, anyone?) now includes a second element . . . a permanent capital-gains tax cut. Sounding more Republican than some Republicans, Pelosi said shortly after the elections that she believed a tax cut would be more effective at boosting the economy than another tax rebate.

Shlaes, the recent author of a sobering history of the Great Depression, seems leery of the tax-friendly faces on the new Obama economic team. But she also seems optimistic that they can be talked out of their most destructive inclinations.

"The rest of us just have to help them figure out a graceful way to do so," wrote Shlaes. Like . . . oh, begging.

Reach MacEachern at 602-444-8883.