Sarah Palin (Getty)

Just when I thought I'd seen everything, I find (again) that I'm wrong. Up in Alaska, where taking digs as Gov. Sarah Palin has become a cottage industry, there's a new twist.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, the Alaska Personnel Board -- which has been tasked with the responsibility for investigating ethics complaints filed against the governor -- has decided to work with the state Attorney General's office to make public the cost of investigating each ethics complaint.

On Tuesday, New Jersey Republicans will go to the polls to choose their nominee to battle Gov. Jon Corzine in the fall campaign.

After that, the campaign should be all about Corzine.

Re-election campaigns are always -- always -- a referendum on the incumbent.

Voters ask themselves a very simple question: Does this guy deserve another term in office, or not?

If you're the challenger, you must convince a majority of the voters that the incumbent doesn't deserve another term in office, and then -- and only then -- can you convince them that you offer a credible alternative.

"It is not upon a person who is testifying to go out of his way on anything. It is the person who has to ask the questions."

So said Illinois Sen. Roland W. Burris, in explaining how it was that his failure to share -- with a legislative impeachment panel -- his conversation with former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich's brother Rob should not be considered evidence he lied to the panel.

I wasn't there when he was sworn in before that legislative panel, but every time I've witnessed the swearing-in of a witness before similar panels, the oath is always the same: The witness swears to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Kris Allen (Getty)

I noted that this typically worked because the bulk of votes for the eliminated third-place finisher ended up going to the second-place finisher, allowing him to leap-frog over the front-runner to victory. I used that model to correctly predict the upset victory by Kris Allen over Adam Lambert in the American Idol finals.

But even I had no idea just how appropriate that model was. Because now we can add to the tale complaints from the losing side of vote-rigging and ballot-box-stuffing -- all of which took place not merely right under the noses of, but apparently with the connivance of, powerful entities associated with the show.

President Obama with Sonia Sotomayor and her mother, Celina, at the White House yesterday. (Getty)

How? By locking in Florida, a state without which any hopes of a GOP comeback in 2012 dwindle virtually to nothing.

In the 15 presidential elections going back to 1952 -- of which Republicans have won nine, and Democrats six -- Florida was part of the winning GOP coalition in each of the party's nine national victories.

For true aficionados of New Jersey Republican politics, tonight's gubernatorial debate promises to be the encounter we've all been waiting for: a chance for Steve Lonegan and Chris Christie to explain their competing visions for the state.

For Lonegan, it is something more -- it will be, perhaps, his last chance to change the dynamic of the GOP gubernatorial primary campaign and overtake Christie in the final week.

Two new polls released last week show Christie's lead over Lonegan has expanded into significant double-digit territory.

But they also show that a huge portion of the likely GOP primary electorate still doesn't know enough about the candidates to make an informed choice.

My fellow CQPolitics blogger David Corn graced me last Friday by responding in writing to my post on the Obama v. Cheney argument over Guantanamo Bay.

Upon being made aware of his counter, my first thought was, "Really? David Corn is responding to me? Cool!"

My second thought was, "But he's violating the rule that says you should always shoot up, and never shoot down. David Corn shouldn't be responding to me, he should be responding to Charles Krauthammer."

Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday. (Getty)

When you're explaining, you're losing.

What counts is not what you're saying, what counts is what you're talking about.

Always shoot at the guy above you, and never shoot at the guy below you unless he's catching up so fast you have no other option.

When you choose to engage, do so on terrain of your choosing, where you are strong and your enemy is weak.

And once you've chosen to engage on the terrain of your choice, make sure that if he brings a knife, you bring a gun.

Chris Christie has opened a 23-point lead in the New Jersey GOP gubernatorial primary, according to a new survey by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, and that sound you hear is me, eating crow.

According to the Q Poll, Christie now leads former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan by 56-33 percent.

Similarly, a new Monmouth University poll shows Christie with a 50-32 percent lead in the GOP primary.

Lyndon Johnson. George Wallace. Sam Nunn. And tomorrow night, you'll be able to add one more name to that list - American Idol Kris Allen.

Johnson, Wallace, and Nunn - along with Reubin Askew, Bob Graham, Lester Maddox and a half dozen other Southern Democrats elected governor or Senator (along with Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican) - all share something in common: Each achieved a statewide general election victory only after coming from behind to win a statewide primary runoff after having trailed in the first round of primary election voting. By the same token, expect Kris Allen to come from behind to defeat Adam Lambert Wednesday night.

This piece by Matt Mackowiak -- one of the rising stars among GOP communicators -- on President Obama's move to appoint Utah Gov.Jon Huntsman Jr. as ambassador to the People's Republic of China does a very nice job of explaining the strategic political implications of the move for both Obama's likely re-election campaign in 2012 and Huntsman's own short-term political future.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two U.S. envoys to Asian nations of great significance who later dabbled in presidential politics.

Both were Republicans.

Both served their country as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Both served their party as nominee for vice president.

One of the joys of politics is that it attracts some enormously talented writers -- and if you enjoy reading the written word, the subject matter offers a world of variety.

You can read high comedy (the Clinton impeachment or low (the Dole campaign of 1996, drama (Reagan's 1987 call for Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!, suspense (the 1976 GOP national convention, romance (Howard Dean's 2004 insurgent campaign or tragedy (the 1968 Democratic convention.

And for daily political journalism, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post is a brilliant sketch writer -- on the order of Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner at the dawn of the Age of Television.

Today's classic entry is his take on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's press conference yesterday, in which she tied herself into knots while charging that the CIA had lied to her, and to Congress, "all the time."

Read it, and be thankful God gave you the politics gene.

As Barack Obama prepares to give the commencement address Sunday at one of American Catholicism's grandest stages -- a speech that has caused a great deal of controversy, given Obama's hard-core pro-choice stand on abortion -- he and his allies cannot be pleased to learn the results of a new Gallup Poll: America, the data shows, now should properly be called a pro-life nation.

According to the survey -- in the field May 7-10, released this morning -- 51 percent of American adults describe themselves as pro-life, while just 42 percent describe themselves as pro-choice.

By 49-44 percent, women are more pro-life than pro-choice.

By 54-39, men are more pro-life than pro-choice.

Former Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle -- whose 2005 indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on money laundering and conspiracy charges began a chain reaction that led, eventually, to the end of DeLay's two-decade career in Congress -- is back in the news, telling the Austin American-Statesman that he's considering a run for state attorney general next year.

As the Texas Watchdog blog points out, this could make for an interesting coincidence -- even as Earle contemplates a new campaign to win the Attorney General's office, allies of DeLay have offered new legislation to strip his old office of its powers to prosecute most state legislators, and place that responsibility in the office of the ... attorney general.

State Rep. Wayne Christian's bill would remove from the Travis County D.A.'s office the power to prosecute state elected officials and officers, and transfer it instead to their home-county D.A.'s.

"It's not about the policies or the politics, and it's certainly not about the principles. It's about power, and it has been for a long time."

So writes Jim Geraghty in this piece for National Review Online, explaining what motivates our 44th President.

As one who will forever bear, with Steve Schmidt, the responsibility for having to run a general election campaign against Obama -- and the concomitant frustration in trying to figure him out, and the ignominy of a wipeout at the polls -- I can attest first-hand to the depth of Geraghty's perception. It's dead on.

When last we left Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, he was facing a dilemma -- his own Democrat-dominated Board had voted by 12-3 to repeal a one penny sales tax hike he had rammed through the body last year.

The Board's move to repeal the tax hike put him on the opposite side of the Daley brothers -- Richard M. (Chicago's Mayor) and John (Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee Chairman).

And that could mean big trouble for Stroger in what is anticipated to be a tough primary fight next February.

Is Rep. John P. "The P is for Power" Murtha about to become the new Tom DeLay?

He will if Rep. Pete Sessions and the National Republican Congressional Committee have anything to say about it.

DeLay, of course, became the face of Republican congressional corruption in the 2006 cycle.

Though DeLay himself has never been convicted of anything -- and continues to maintain his innocence as federal and state prosecutions against him move forward at a glacial pace -- several of his former aides and lobbying allies pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying corruption scandal.

On the revelation by George Stephanopoulos that elements of the John Edwards' presidential campaign's high command had planned to sabotage their own campaign, some more thoughts:

First, I note that former senior Edwards strategist Joe Trippi has denied anything like this ever took place.

"No one that I know had such a plan, I wasn't involved in a plan like that, it didn't exist, it's a fantasy," Trippi told CNN.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen. That just means Trippi didn't know it was happening.

Trippi was not as central to Edwards' campaign in 2008 as he was to Howard Dean's campaign in 2004.

And Trippi, of course, was known to be close to Elizabeth Edwards. So it's easy to understand why a potential saboteur would not confide in Trippi."

As anyone who's ever worked a major campaign knows, debates are not won in the auditorium; they are won in the news media.

Other than our quadrennial presidential debates -- which have taken on the status of pop culture events like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards -- so few people actually watch political debates live on television that the only way anyone knows anything about them is through the media's coverage of the debates in the days following.

Consequently, debates -- to the extent they have an impact on voter attitudes -- are "won" or "lost" in the coverage that follows them. That's especially true of debates like the one coming up tonight between candidates for the Republican Party's gubernatorial nomination.

George Stephanopoulos (Getty)

That's what ABC's George Stephanopoulos says they told him.

"Up until December of 2007, most on Edwards' staff didn't believe rumors about the affair," Stephanopoulos wrote on his blog.

"But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.

"Several of them had gotten together and devised a 'doomsday' strategy of sorts," he continued.

"It's a wonderful country, this America. It's called a secret ballot," former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said Thursday -- as he refused to pledge his support to former Congressman Pat Toomey over recent Republican-turned-Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter for his homestate's 2010 Senate race.

Ridge's comment came in response to this question posed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "If you had to vote between Toomey, the conservative Republican, or Specter, the ex-Republican, who would you vote for?"

With his refusal, Tom Ridge made clear that he really is through with electoral politics -- because he'll never, ever earn the support of conservative Republicans again.

Sadly, I wish I could say Ridge's refusal to back Toomey is inexplicable.

But it's not.

With former Governor Tom Ridge's announcement that he will not be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U. S. Senate in Pennsylvania next year, the Keystone State's playing field has shifted again.

About which, some thoughts:

First, props, please, to Pat Toomey's nascent Senate campaign.

Beginning earlier this week, opposition research began to show up in various conservative media outlets, all of which was aimed at making Ridge and his allies understand that a race against Toomey for the GOP nomination wouldn't be the cakewalk some recruiters and/or supporters were no doubt telling him it would be.

In George Orwell's "Animal Farm," all the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

In Illinois, there are 102 counties, and all of them are equal, but one of them is more equal than the others.

That one extra-special-equal county is the County of Cook.

If this had happened in 1990 or 1994, how different would the last decade have been on the national scene?

Two weeks ago, we suggested the possibility that embattled New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine might decide to invade the GOP gubernatorial primary in an attempt to defeat or cripple his strongest potential opponent, former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

Yesterday, The New York Times' David Halbfinger reported that the Democratic Governors Association is getting ready to do just that -- begin advertising against Christie -- while he's still fighting for the GOP nomination.

So just who at the DGA reads this blog, anyway?

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.

In Cook County, Illinois, the modern-day version of that fable could well be this: For want of a sales tax repeal, the governor's mansion and a U.S. Senate seat were lost.

How?

Because Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is once again playing with fire.

Former two-term Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge may well be weighing his possible entrance in the Senate race through the prism of a potential 2012 presidential candidacy. That is, would a 2012 run for the White House be helped or hurt by winning a U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania in 2010?

Ridge is a serious man, with a proven track record as a Republican vote-getter in a major battleground state -- the kind of state Republicans will need to win if they aim to make Barack Obama's a one-term presidency.

He served six terms in Congress and two terms as governor, and served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security.

With speculation ramping up that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge may decide within the next few weeks to enter the primary for the GOP Senate nomination -- and the right to take on party-switching Arlen Specter -- you can expect conservative supporters of former Rep. Pat Toomey will begin working to frame the debate as conservative Toomey vs. liberal Ridge.

The first shots have been fired: National Review's David Freddoso takes a quick look at Ridge's record as a congressman (1983-95), and finds it worrisome on a number of fronts to conservatives:

While in Congress, writes Freddoso, Ridge "voted to expand welfare eligibility (1984), to fund abortions with public money, and in favor of the fairness doctrine (in 1987)."

Earlier today, New Jersey's gubernatorial campaigns revealed how much money they've got left to spend in the 28 days remaining before the June 2nd primary.

Front-running Republican Chris Christie reported a whopping $3 million cash on hand.

His main conservative challenger, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, reported having about $500,000 left for the stretch run.

That's likely to be the only good news of the day for Christie, and even that will be trumped by a larger story -- complete with made-for-TV visuals -- offered up by Lonegan's campaign, about which, more below.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom -- and the hopes of former Congressman Pat Toomey -- the defection of Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party last week wasn't the end of the Republican primary contest in Pennsylvania.

In fact, it was only the beginning.

A new poll out today shows why -- and it shows that, more than anything else, what Toomey needs is another poll.

"The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can't agree on that, elections are the least of our problems."

So says South Carolina's junior senator, Jim DeMint, in this Saturday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

In the wake of last week's defection by Sen. Arlen Specter and the passing of Jack Kemp, DeMint's piece is a good way for conservatives to start the week.

No, not this Jack Ryan.

THIS Jack Ryan.

Even in New Jersey -- where corruption is endemic -- voters expect their politicians to mouth the standard platitudes about fighting corruption.

It's like a New Jersey take on an old Soviet-era joke: "The politicians pretend to fight corruption, and we pretend to believe them."

So when a politician breaks tradition by publicly recognizing and thanking a guy who was convicted of conspiracy in a plan to bribe local officials to rig contracts, people sit up and pay attention.

And when that politician is governor of the state, and the crook he's recognizing and thanking publicly is a major campaign donor, it makes news.

Will Republicans wage war on ideological grounds against President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice David H. Souter?

That certainly seems to be what they're preparing for, based on this senator's statement that's being emailed around:

See if you can guess who's speaking:

"If the president uses ideology in deciding whom to nominate to the bench, the Senate, as part of its responsibility to advise and consent, should do the same in deciding whom to confirm. Pretending that ideology doesn't matter -- or, even worse, doesn't exist -- is exactly the opposite of what the Senate should do."

I'm just wondering:

Did these guys talk to these guys?

Dueling press conferences, on back-to-back days? Really?

Christine Todd Whitman -- twice elected governor of New Jersey without once winning a majority of the vote -- can always be counted on to show up in The New York Times when the Gray Lady needs someone with an (R) after her name to caterwaul about how the GOP is too conservative.

Tuesday's party-switch by Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter provided a golden opportunity.

So on Thursday, her words once again graced the op-ed pages of The Newspaper of Record.

What's interesting is not that she uses the Specter defection as an excuse to sigh over her party's turn to the Dark Side. What's interesting is the political amnesia she relies on to lay out that case.