Hugh Hewitt is clearly an intelligent man, but he sometimes comes across as if he thinks he’s the lone pragmatist on the Right. From his book If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat to his post today taking issue with NRO’s Terence Jeffrey’s dislike of Rudy Giulani’s social liberalism, Hewitt has continually expressed his exasperation with ideologue conservatives who hold Republican candidates to unrealistically pure conservative standards:

"This answer is an ominous one for the GOP. Tancredo is not a serious candidate, but Jeffrey is a serious opinion-leader on the right. Jeffrey's willingness to publicly bless a protest candidate signals that many on the right would rather fight doomed battles than get to the business of electing a nominee who can be elected president. The irony is that in our conversation Jeffrey points to the importance of the Supreme Court's likely vacancies in his critique of Rudy, but then in effect endorses the sort of fecklessness in politics that almost guarantees that Hillary gets the SCOTUS appointments from January, 2009 to October, 2012.

It is one thing to be undecided among the Big Three, and even acceptable to still indulge wishful thinking about the entry into the race of candidates for whom time has already run out.

But encouraging the sort of destructive crusade that Congressman Tancredo wants to lead should be labelled exactly what it is: The triumph of posture over purpose."

Hewitt’s main point (that Rudy is preferable to any Dem) is inarguable, but he takes it too far, allows an exception for himself, neglects the important impact that voting for a seemingly unelectable candidate can have on the party and other candidates, and greatly overstates the danger to Republicans of not uniting behind an anointed mainstream “electable” candidate. What is the real danger here? That Tancredo getting 5% - 10% in various primaries will rob Rudy or McCain of enough momentum that Hillary will beat him at the wire? I have never seen any evidence that primary opposition hurts a candidate, or that an easy road to the nomination helps one.

Fighting a “doomed battle” for Tancredo in the primaries is not at all the same as fighting for Hillary in the general election. Tancredo supporters are no more endangering the GOP’s chance of ultimately capturing the White House than Rudy supporters are endangering McCain’s chances (or vice versa); nor is such the main intent of any primary voter / supporter.

Hewitt’s explanation of how Chaffee’s circumstances were different has stuck with me – not because it’s a sign of hypocrisy or anything like that, but because it was true and well-expressed (“Jim Jeffords proved that closely divided senates are governed by the most erratic person in the majority.”) Good point. So Hewitt allows himself some commonsense latitude from blindly having to obey Hewitt’s Law of always supporting even the worst GOP candidate over even the best Dem. And I won’t quibble with him there. I only wish he’d return the favor and allow some of the rest of us a little leeway for making our own exceptions to his law.

Did Democrats who wasted time boosting Dean and even Kucinich have no effect on the 2004 race, the party, and the eventual nominee? Or did they have a negative (from a Dem POV) effect? I don’t think so. Enthusiastic support for hard-core leftist candidates helped them pull their party and John Kerry the way they wanted them to go (and thus ultimately the country, as Bush was able to sidle left toward the middle in response to Kerry shifting left due to the tugging of the Kucinichites).

The right needs to learn to stand up for what it believes in the way the left does. This is one instance where maintaining a doctrinaire purist approach actually has positive practical benefits as well. Whereas meekly uniting behind the supposedly most-electable candidates only gives a party Bob Dole or Al Gore.

Hillary Clinton does understand that there’s no Mr. Exxon stuffing billion dollar bills into his back pocket, right? I mean, she is being totally disingenuous when she says, “I want to take those profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund…” knowing full well that “those profits” are owned by tens of millions of Americans (and others, of course) through our 401k’s and other investments? She is just practicing base demagoguery and class warfare even though she knows better, correct?

Just checking.

Joe Biden’s latest patronizing brain explosion is puzzling even in the “you know what he meant” sense. Because, actually, I don’t. Is Obama more articulate or clean cut or brighter than Frederick Douglas was? Or MLK?

And more relevantly for today, what about Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, JC Watts, or Michael Steele? It’s ironic that those five have been all but excommunicated from black America (even more by white leftists than by other blacks) for acting “too white,” while apparently the same disposition in a black Democrat is not only allowable but praiseworthy.

As the post-mortem of the Republican bloodbath gets underway, there has been a lot of finger-pointing. Of all the questions that should haunt the GOP, one of the biggest is, what if the party had just fielded an electable senatorial candidate in Florida?

Despite the national mood, the 2006 political climate was still very friendly to Florida Republicans. Popular Governer Jeb Bush would have taken Bill Nelson’s seat easily. So might Charlie Crist have done, if Crist had chosen to run for the Senate and left the governership to Tom Gallagher. Gallagher himself would have been a strong opponent for Nelson.

Even Will McBride, the GOP primary runner-up to Katherine Harris, would have given Nelson a tough fight. I think the incumbent Nelson would have beaten the relatively obscure young challenger, but Cuban-American McBride at least would have made the Democrats and Nelson work for the seat. Who knows what indirect effect that might have had in Virginia, Montana, and Missouri, if the Democrats had been forced to spend and campaign in Florida?

What little chance McBride had of beating Harris in the primary was probably reduced to zero by an unfortunate coincidence: His name is almost identical to that of Democrat Bill McBride, the unsuccessful 2002 challenger to Governer Jeb Bush. The two are unrelated.

One of the most common memes on the right hand side of the blogosphere over the past three days has been: Conservatism didn’t lose, the Republicans lost. The voters didn’t reject the conservative movement. The GOP rejected conservatism, and then the electorate rejected the GOP.

So let me get this straight: It isn’t that the party which represents conservatives’ principles lost, it’s that such a party doesn’t even exist*. And this is supposed to be the silver lining? As Arnold begged in True Lies, “Stop. Cheering. Me. Up.”

*Okay, it exists, but not (yet) in any electorally meaningful sense.

Yesterday I looked at general trends in recent sixth-year (of a presidential cycle) elections. I believe that 1998 and 1986 are more relevant to the upcoming election than 1994, 2002, 1990, or 1982. However, it is true that the example of 1994 cannot be entirely discounted just because it was a second-year election. But even if we allow that second-year election historical trends may in general be as applicable to 2006 as sixth-year examples are, this particular election year still has far more in common with 1998 than with 1994.

1994 was different than ’98 or ’06 in that the Republicans achieved their gains by promoting themselves positively (via the Contract with America). The 1998 GOP tried to go down a different road. They thought they smelled blood in the water in the wake of Whitewater, Monicagate, and Wag the Dog. They promised impeachment and investigation. And the electorate rejected this message.

Today’s Democrat faithful are making the same mistakes that overzealous Republicans made in 1998. They fail to understand that not every lapse can effectively be used to tar every member of the opposite party. The Democrats have overreached themselves in trying to turn Mark Foley’s personal scandal into a vast Republican conspiracy and coverup. Like Monicagate, the situation just doesn’t have nearly as wide a reach as the true believers would like it to have.

Besides that, the scandal is already four weeks old and by election day will be six weeks old. The public tends to move on fairly quickly (as we were exhorted to do by the left after Clinton’s impeachment). After a certain point, efforts to keep a controversy alive are not only nonproductive, but counterproductive. Republicans eventually did themselves more harm than they did the Democrats by bludgeoning the public with the phrase “semen-stained dress.” When a one-note messenger just won’t shut up, eventually you are left with no alternative but to shoot him. Whether that’s fair or unfair is beside the point.

The electorate in general – especially the critical swing portion – does not have the endless appetite for outrage that the hardcore base on each side has. They are offended by Foley and weary of the war– but they are also put off by the glee displayed by some Democrats and their media mouthpieces about what most people regard as grave issues. The Republicans made the same mistake over Clinton’s affair and lying – a black eye for the whole country, not just one party – and the Democrats made it in 2002 at Paul Wellstone’s funeral.

Democrat Congressman John Dingell, former (and possibly future) chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, reminiscences fondly about the glory days of the committee during the glory days of the Democrat-controlled House in the 80s and early 90s. As Newsweek puts it, “At times the chairman seemed more prosecutor than politician. He used his gavel to call dozens of hearings.” Dingell predicts of his party’s likely actions should they regain control of the House that, “…we'll probably have lots of hearings.” [Presumably, on pretty much every action and inaction taken by the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress]. This is exactly the kind of prospect that sends a few thousand fanatical lefties into paroxysms of joy – and turns off everyone else.

Time magazine explained in a 1998 post-election story, “The GOP thought it was its year. But Democrats got the last laugh by talking issues, not investigations.” Exactly.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on the eve of the first debate between Florida gubernatorial candidates Charlie Crist and Jim Davis found that the race had surprisingly tightened and was now a statistical dead heat. Most other October polls had shown Republican Crist with a double digit lead. Even a Strategic Vision poll released two days after the Quinnipiac poll showed Crist with a 51-42 lead.

Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute seems to think that the other polls are all outliers. But I believe that it is Quinnipiac which has missed the bus here. Brown himself notes that the key to Davis’s surge has been the independent voter bloc. Crist holds an 85-8 lead among Republicans, compared to Davis’ 74-19 lead among Democrats. But Davis has a 50-36 lead among independents, which propels his total support to 44%, as compared to Crist’s 46% - a difference well within the poll’s 3.4% margin of error.

I am not buying it. I think that this poll overrepresents independents, and I think these independents include a number of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Another Quinnipiac poll, this one released on the 25^th, shows Democrat Senator Bill Nelson with a 64-29 lead over Katherine Harris (yes, that Katherine Harris). Both Quinnipiac polls were taken from October 18-22, and 816 likely Florida voters were queried in each. I was able to back into the Republican-Democrat-independent breakdown from the stated results, and both polls had a party breakdown of 32% Republican, 35% Democrat, and 33% independent. I am assuming therefore that the same 816 respondents are represented in the two polls, though even if that assumption is wrong, it would not change my conclusion.

Right off the bat, I do not find it credible that in the upcoming election, independents will outnumber Republicans and almost match the number of Democrats voting. Florida is not an open primary state, and those who refuse to register as a member of either major party are only shortchanging themselves of the ability to vote in primary elections. Non presidential year elections typically attract only the more committed voters. IMO, of those Floridians who care enough about politics to vote in years such as 2006, far more than two thirds of them will have a party affiliation of either R or D. I have no data to back that feeling up, but I’m sticking to it.

Then too, I am very doubtful that all of the Quinnipiac poll respondents who labeled themselves independents are being completely candid. This is where the senatorial poll comes into play. 57% of Democrats view Harris unfavorably, compared to 20% of Republicans. But 50% of independents view her unfavorably as well, almost as high an unfavorable percentage as she garners from Democrats.

This pattern is repeated across the board, with self-described independents’ responses being much closer to Democrats’ than to Republicans’. To those confident in the validity of the polling process, this of course indicates that most independent voters truly are trending to Davis and the Democrats. To me, it simply indicates that one rogue poll has oversampled Democrats – particularly Democrats who are willing to conceal their party identity. In support of this conclusion, I offer not only the other polls, but the election financial markets, which show a strong collective belief in a Crist victory.

Update: The past 24 hours have seen a flurry of efforts in leftist alternative media to out Crist as gay. Rumors regarding the divorced Crist’s sexuality have been bouncing around Florida for years. Crist has in fact confronted such allegations before, in a very effective manner.

This smear attempt will have no negative effect on Crist and may in fact provoke a backlash in his favor, much as the awkward attempt to expose George Allen as a crypto-Jew had in Virginia. The Crist rumors are ancient, everyone has heard them before, and his supporters simply don’t care (even if they’re true).

Leftists who are obsessed with homosexuality themselves simply don’t understand that for the great majority of conservatives, a politician being gay is not close to being a deal breaker in and of itself.

Hopeful Democrats and worried Republicans have been speculating all through this election cycle that the 2006 House election could be the Democrats’ 1994. But 2006 does not really bear much resemblance to 1994; in fact, it has a lot more in common with 1998.

1994, like 1982, was a second-year election (of a presidential term). 2006, like 1998, is a sixth-year election. Much has been written about the “six-year itch,” which has historically spelled large House losses for the party which occupies the White House. But the key word is historically. Consider how many seats the party in control of the White House has lost or gained in the last six sixth-year elections:

• 1950     -28
• 1958     -49
• 1966     -48
• 1974     -49
• 1986       -5
• 1998      +5

It is easy to see from the above how the concept of the six-year itch gained currency – but it’s also easy to see that the last time it made its presence felt was a third of a century ago. Things have changed since 1974. Most significantly, redistricting/gerrymandering has drastically reduced the number of competitive seats. The 1950 – 1974 elections are no more relevant to predicting 2006 results than the election of 1802 is.

There is another factor in play here: the coattail effect. Actually, in this case, it’s the absence of a Bush coattail. Most presidents win election by wider electoral margins than George W. Bush won by in 2000, and they often sweep a number of their fellow party members into Congress with them. But then, two years later, many of these coattail congressmen are swept back out office when they cannot ride the president’s back. The Democrats lost 35 House seats when Ronald Reagan decisively won the presidency in 1980 – but they gained 27 of them back two years later.

Because Bush never had a coattail to begin with – he lost the popular vote in 2000 and the Democrats gained one House seat that year – he didn’t have a reverse coattail in 2002 (his party actually gained seven seats). In fact, the relatively narrow margins in the last five biennial elections simply haven’t produced the kinds of large House swings that would make the GOP vulnerable to a large corrective counter-swing. Bush also had no particular 2004 coattail whose beneficiaries would now be vulnerable – his party gained two House seats two years ago.

There is one important caveat regarding the above: 9/11. Without 9/11, there probably wouldn’t have been a seven-seat GOP House gain in 2002. Seven seats isn’t a huge swing, but it’s a larger gain than the Republicans would likely have realized in the absence of 9/11 – they might even have lost a few seats instead. So it’s possible that 2006 will see a swing that would otherwise have occurred in 2002 but which has been artificially delayed by security concerns.