"Perhaps they felt like they had killed health care reform... They thought the fight was over. And that the president couldn't now succeed. I do believe that. And it is almost as if they had made the statement that they thought they had stopped the thing. And so it created a breathing space for us to regroup."
-- White House adviser David Axelrod, quoted by the Huffington Post, on Republicans letting down their guard after winning the Massachusetts Senate special election in January.