Margie:
Your reasoning is sound enough... Essentially, the hurricane will take the path of least resistence. Unfortunately, one can not make a snap shot of the atmosphere and assume that 10 minutes (even) from now those parameters will persist. Not to insult you, but the dynamic of the synoptics precludes that as good wisdom.

Enter, the models...

Unfotunately, and it was stated earlier today, the large scale synoptic picture between the Atlantic SW Basin extending up into central and eastern NA has, for general appeal, changed little since Katrina. We note that with Katrina, the models were persistently left of the ultimate landfall location. The defining difference in the overall synoptics between the two events is the in Rita's case, it does seem that she's rattling around between higher heights - so it is a question of amplification over placement of blocking features.

For what it is worth...that's told me all along that the differences are a wash and Rita may just cause the models to have similar biases. Whether right for the right reasons or right for the wrong reason, I think we can admit at this point that the models have also been displaying somewhat of a left bias; particularly evident when compared to the progs from 2 days ago. This in mind, it would surprise me that her north component will accelerate in time, tonight. We'll see.