Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, politics in America have become ossified: Republicans have come to believe they hold a permanent majority, cemented by the attacks. Democrats have come to fear they’ve been consigned to the status of a permanent minority, imprisoned by the same.

All of this is about to be put to the test Tuesday, however, and the election results may just break the mold we’ve all been stuck in for the last half decade.

Because this election is something of a game of solitaire — the Democrats have aggressively avoided putting forward a platform of their own, leaving the Republicans to contend against themselves (and lose) — the results will be far more significant to the GOP than to the opposition. Specifically, if the GOP loses one or both houses of Congress, the party will have to accept that September 11 isn’t an unlimited get-out-of-jail-free card.

(Sorry. Perhaps that’s an insensitive metaphor this particular election cycle.)

One of the top conservative pundits who may find himself needing to rethink some things this fall will be National Review’s Jim Geraghty, author of the recently released “Voting To Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership” (Touchstone, 384 pages, $15.95).

From the very first page of his book, Mr. Geraghty is forced to backpedal from its central premise: that due to the Democrats’ fecklessness in the face of terrorism, Republicans can essentially do no wrong. Acknowledging that President Bush’s approval numbers have tanked, 2005 was a disaster for Republicans generally, the GOP has lost its edge on terrorism in recent polls, and 2006 is shaping up to be a disaster for the GOP as well, he gamely admits that a perfectly reasonable question might be: “Aren’t you completely wrong?”

Things have only gotten worse for the GOP in the time since Mr. Geraghty wrote his introduction (presumably a few months ago). Mr. Bush is still down in the polls, the Mark Foley congressional page scandal broke, Iraq looks more violent and chaotic by the day, and Republicans are no longer just even with Democrats on the issue of terrorism. In fact, they’ve gone from leading the Democrats by 30 percentage points on that issue in January 2002 to trailing by 5 percentage points or more in a slew of October 2006 polls.

Pedal harder, Mr. Geraghty.

None of this is to say, however, that the premise of “Voting to Kill” is incorrect. In fact, the argument that the terrorist attacks and the war on terror have created a political climate hospitable to Republicans and intensely problematic to Democrats is so jawslackeningly obvious that one wonders how a book about such a subject could even have been written. The reader so quickly concedes Mr. Geraghty’s initial point that it must have been a chore for him to fill up the rest of those pages.

And indeed it seems to have been. Instead of adding much depth to the reader’s understanding of post-September 11 politics, the author spends the bulk of his time restating the obvious (more voters have become concerned about security, and those voters have voted Republican) and giving a fiercely partisan accounting of every stupid thing a liberal has ever said about terrorism. Sure, it’s a long list. But if you spend any time reading right-wing blogs, there will be precious little in the way of quotes from Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, and George Soros to shock you.

Why might the ground fall out from under the GOP, despite the structural advantage provided by the war on terror? Mr. Geraghty’s book is illequipped to shed much light on that question.

If the GOP does tumble into the abyss, the Democrats will still be left with the unenviable task of figuring out exactly what it is they stand for (other than not being the Republicans). Into that gap rushes David Callahan, co-founder of the liberal think-tank Demos and author of “The Moral Center: How We Can Reclaim Our Country From Die-Hard Extremists, Rogue Corporations, Hollywood Hacks, and Pretend Patriots” (Harcourt, 272 pages, $24).

Lifting liberally (though almost certainly unknowingly) from Senator Rick Santorum’s 2005 tome, “It Takes a Family,” Mr. Callahan offers a vision of “values”-infused activist politics pungent enough to gag a donkey.

The Christian right is right, he argues, that our culture is coming apart at the seams on account of rampant greed and consumerism. And, like Mr. Santorum, he thinks the only remedy is a government with tentacles long enough to reach into every bedroom, family room, and mall in America. Government-funded marriage and fatherhood counseling, heavier regulation of broadcast television, a campaign against violent video games, even abstinence education — nothing is too trivial or too intrusive to go beyond Mr. Callahan’s desire to impose his vision of a good society on the rest of us.

In fact, Mr. Callahan’s book shares something quite striking with Mr. Geraghty’s. At the end of “Voting To Kill,” Mr. Geraghty gushes about the war on terror, “A great nation deserves great debates about great challenges.” Similarly, Mr. Callahan doesn’t seem to mind that Americans are healthier, happier, more prosperous, and perhaps even more moral than at any other time in our history. Crusaders need a crusade, and any crusade will do.

When the polls have closed Tuesday, it can only be hoped that both sets of crusaders find themselves chastened: Republicans by the knowledge that they’re no longer invincible, and Democrats by the realization that they have no idea what to do next.

Mr. Sager is author of “The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle To Control the Republican Party.” His Web site is www.rhsager.com.