If I were a Birther, or a Bircher, or Mel Gibson playing Jerry Fletcher in "Conspiracy Theory", I'd be convinced that Andy Martin's campaign is being secretly funded by allies of GOP rival Mark Steven Kirk.

Kirk, of course, is the liberal Republican congressman who represents Illinois' 10th Congressional District -- Chicago's North Shore suburbs (which you've seen in the background if you ever watched "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" or "Risky Business" or the CBS summer replacement series "Swingtown") -- and is now running for the GOP nomination for the Senate seat once held by Barack Obama.

Martin, for those readers outside the listening range of Chicago radio stations WLS, WGN, and WBBM, would be described properly as a "gadfly," except that I actually know and like some gadflies, and I wouldn't want to insult them.

He is a perpetual candidate for office whose Wikipedia entry is so wildly amusing that three weeks ago, he filed a lawsuit against -- wait for it -- Wikipedia itself, claiming that it is "a tax-exempt protosocialist scam that seeks to harass Republicans, conservatives and Obama opponents."

With the release of a new Rasmussen Reports survey showing the special Senate election in Massachusetts within 10 points, I am so glad I'm not Sen. Robert Menendez today.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm glad I'm not Robert Menendez every day -- but especially not today, or tomorrow, or for the next 14 days, because for the next 14 days, the New Jersey Democrat is the Most Important Democratic Senator for Those Who Want To See Obamacare Become Law, and that's just another way of saying he's The Guy Who'll Probably Get Blamed If Things Don't Break the Right Way.

And what would constitute things breaking the wrong way?

Losing the Jan. 19 special election for the Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy, for starters.

Since the first shots were fired in the most recent and ongoing iteration of the "war" for the "soul" of the Republican Party, I have kept my mouth shut, confining myself to a role as an interested observer, offering particular small-bore insights and analysis as opportunities presented themselves, but shying away from any meta-narratives or "big picture" analyses of "what it all means" for the GOP.

I've done so because a) typical mainstream media coverage of the "war" for the "soul" of the party is not meant to illuminate possible courses of action that could lead to unity among and between the various factions opposed to Obamanomics, but to heighten the divisions between various factions of the party, with a view to a fundamental and irrevocable breach, and b) I kept hoping somebody else would step up and write the piece that needed to be written.

That was fine, as long as things were muddling along without a crisis. But with the publication of this morning's Rasmussen Reports survey release indicating that, were it a political party, the Tea Party Party would have more adherents than the GOP, we can no longer say the GOP is not in crisis mode.

Scratch that -- part of the problem is the fact that the GOP still may not be in crisis mode, despite learning today that the party's brand is so bad that it now loses out to a political movement that didn't even exist eight months ago.

A new Marist poll released yesterday suggests that a Rudy Giuliani vs. Kirsten Gillibrand matchup for a U.S. Senate seat from New York would go to the former New York City Mayor, by a hefty margin -- he leads her by 54-40 percent in a hypothetical 2010 contest, according to the latest survey.

Meanwhile, the same poll shows Giuliani trailing potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo by a margin of 53-43 percent in a hypothetical 2010 contest for governor.

This backs up the argument I made in this piece yesterday, that Giuliani's apparent decision to pass on the Governor's race -- and give up a chance at a job for which he would be well suited, to run instead for a job that would likely drive him crazy -- is largely a function of his belief that he would have an easier time winning a contest for the U.S. Senate than for the governorship.

Could Rudy Giuliani be planning to run for president in 2012 -- by winning a Senate seat in 2010?

Consider: Earlier this afternoon, New York newspapers went gaga over reports that, first, Giuliani had informed political allies he would not run for governor in 2010, and second, that he would run for the Senate instead, against freshman Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Now consider: Giuliani, the ultimate alpha male, is a chief executive. Decision-making is his greatest talent; thoughtful deliberation, not so much. Rapidly assessing options, making decisions, and then taking action is his stock in trade; pondering over weighty arguments, or even engaging in debate, is ... not something for which he is well known.

Moreover, raising money for a campaign for governor of New York would be far, far easier for Giuliani than would raising money for a Senate race -- which, after all, is regulated by federal law, with a relatively low individual maximum contribution, while a governor's contest is regulated by far looser state-level fundraising restrictions.

If you're Marco Rubio and you're counting on generating millions of dollars in contributions for your Florida Senate primary contest against a sitting governor of your own party -- a guy you're trying to paint as a big-spending, President Obama-loving liberal -- do you think it helps you, or hurts you, to have the support of George W. Bush's right-hand man?

To many inside-the-Beltway conservative leaders, Karl Rove was one of the architects of the disaster that was the Bush administration:

Rove was the one behind the establishment of Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit (read: the biggest expansion of the federal government since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society);

Rove was the one pushing for comprehensive immigration overhaul (read: amnesty for illegal immigrants);

Rove was the one pushing Bush to sign McCain-Feingold (read: Rove wanted to lock in John McCain's support for Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, and was willing to trash the First Amendment if necessary);

Rove was the one who drove federal spending to new heights (read: Rove was the one who drove federal spending to new heights).

If RedState is to be believed, conservative pundit Larry Elder -- "The Sage from South Central" -- is in immediate need of a spine transplant.

One can arrive at no other conclusion after reading this piece, posted this morning from the California Republican Convention.

But is RedState to be believed?

According to "RS Insider" -- the anonymous blogger about whom all we know is that he/she registered on the site two years and seven months ago -- a story moving around the state confab over the weekend says that the black conservative talk-radio host/author met with officials of the National Republican Senatorial Committee several months ago to discuss a possible run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, and was told three things:

If he chose to run, the NRSC would not support him; the NRSC was already committed to backing former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's expected bid; and the NRSC expected Fiorina to lose to incumbent Boxer, but believed her candidacy could be helpful to the larger cause, by forcing national Democrats to put tens of millions into Boxer's campaign that could have better been spent elsewhere.

Normally, when a member of the minority offers an amendment to a spending bill, it's routine for his fellow minority party members to support the amendment, while the members of the majority party vote it down.

What's fun is to examine the rebels -- the members who cross party lines to cast votes against their fellow party members -- to see if you can figure out why.

This afternoon, on the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill, the Senate voted on an amendment by conservative South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint "to limit the use of funds for the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport."

That, you may recall, is the airport where there are more federally funded employees and buildings than there are daily passengers -- which isn't difficult, given that it has only three regularly scheduled flights per day.

In other words, DeMint forced the Senate to vote whether the Murtha Airport would receive more government funds (at least from the Transportation-HUD appropriation bill) than the $800,000 in stimulus package funds it received earlier this year.

Not surprisingly, the amendment was defeated, 43-53.

Also not surprisingly, almost every Republican voted for the amendment, and almost every Democrat voted against it.

So the fun part is figuring out the motivation behind the Republicans who voted against it and the Democrats who voted for it.

Last night, by a vote of 83-7, the Senate voted to deny funding to ACORN through the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the wake of recent investigations -- notwithstanding the fact that ABC's Charlie Gibson appears never to have heard of them -- Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns' amendment was, as we say in the business, a no-brainer.

The roll call is quite illuminating -- the seven who voted against the amendment (in effect, voting to allow ACORN to continue receiving taxpayer funds through HUD) were, not surprisingly, all Democrats: Roland W. Burris and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois; Pat Leahy and Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

Some years ago, a lawyer whose client's story was so explosive that everybody in the media wanted to get a piece of him decided to do five Sunday morning talk shows, all on the same day.

Thus was born Doing a "Full Ginsburg."

A few years later, in a Senate race in New Jersey, a candidate quit the race just 35 days before the election -- long after the statutory deadline -- and got the state's Supreme Court to let him get away with it.

Thus was born Pulling a "Torricelli."

Lisa Madigan out, Mark Kirk in?

Are you kidding me?

Illinois Republicans haven't had this good a day since May 18, 1860.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's decision to run for reelection to her current post next year -- rather than run for governor or U.S. Senate, as had been widely expected -- roiled the political waters worse than a Great White trolling the Lake Michigan shallows.

Former Senator Robert Torricelli -- who, like the boxer Roberto Duran, threw up his hands and yelled "No mas!" after enduring months of beating at the hands of Republican challenger Doug Forrester and a New Jersey press corps that thirsted for his blood during his 2002 reelection campaign -- is back, once again raising money for fellow Democrats.

This is nothing new. Torricelli raised eyebrows early in 2004, when he raised money for John Kerry for President.

As Herb Jackson of The Record notes, the interesting thing is not that Democrats are so desperate for campaign cash that they're willing to take money even from an event hosted by their disgraced former colleague; the interesting thing is that the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, is willing to take money even from an event hosted by a man with whom he's had a long-running and very well-known political feud.

At last -- a stumble by the vaunted White House political operation, and an opening for Republicans.

The stumble? This week's mishandling of the seduction of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

The opening? An opportunity to trap the Democrats in a corner.

Thank your lucky stars you're not Tory Mazzola this week.

Mazzola is the communications director for Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign.

That means it's been his job to advise Ensign on how best to acknowledge to the world that Ensign has broken the most important vow he ever made.

In political communications, there are few circumstances more demanding or more threatening.

Having been close to the center of one or two of those kinds of white-hot media frenzies, I can safely say it's not a thing you'd want even your worst enemy to go through.

"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."