Speaking about a Republican-passed immigration bill that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally, or to aid an illegal immigrant, Mrs. Clinton said, “It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because the bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.”

Not coincidently, on the same day that Mrs. Clinton was channeling the late Catholic agitator Dorothy Day, the Democratic National Committee was disseminating via e-mail an opinion article voicing similar sentiments written by Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles.

The gambit shows the lengths to which Democrats will go to recapture Catholic voters, a quarter of the electorate, 55 percent of whom cast their ballots for President Bush in 2004 notwithstanding the Catholic faith of Democratic nominee John Kerry. It’s fair turnabout: During the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush paid a high-profile visit to the Vatican, and months later, some Catholic bishops urged voters to shun politicians like Mr. Kerry who support abortion rights.

Now, Democrats want to woo back the many Hispanic Catholic voters who deserted them in 2004, hence their emphasis on immigrants’ rights, ventured out of conviction but also with the hope of flipping into their column states like Colorado and New Mexico, which went narrowly for Mr. Bush two years ago.

Mrs. Clinton, however, has positioned herself way ahead of her party and any of her putative 2008 Presidential rivals by championing initiatives that appeal to middle-class, white-ethnic, suburban Catholic voters, especially married women (another group that swung heavily to the G.O.P. in 2004). She knows that Catholic defections kept the vote uncomfortably close in some heavily Catholic states that Mr. Kerry won—including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania—and contributed to Mr. Bush’s single-point victory in Iowa.

So we find Mrs. Clinton advocating “pro-family” legislation: for example, joining with the Senate’s two most conservative Catholics—Republicans Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania—to push for a bill authorizing research into the supposedly pernicious effects of electronic media on children. And there she was late last year, in a heavily Catholic Nassau County suburb, touting her bill to make cars safer for children. (As The New York Times noted this week, she has made herself an expert on the infrastructure issues of the aging suburb.) Need we mention her conciliatory language on abortion?

Strategists have been saying for some time that Mrs. Clinton will use her re-election campaign in the heavily Catholic areas of upstate New York as a laboratory for her expected 2008 Presidential bid. “Her spin is, ‘Hey, look, I can win Catholic votes. If I can win the western tier of New York, I can win Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,’” said veteran Democratic operative Hank Sheinkopf. If religion-tinged issues such as abortion and gay marriage can be neutralized in those areas, the Democrats can win on economic issues among hard-pressed Catholic men, Mr. Sheinkopf argues.

Illinois-born Mrs. Clinton, contra her Republican caricature as an angry liberal, can claim an advantage with Catholic and other so-called values voters: Unlike most Democrats, she sounds sincere when she employs Jesus language. Her problem regarding religion and the American electorate is not that she’s a heathen: In fact, she qualifies as one of the most overtly Christian politicians in the country. It’s just that, with conservative evangelical Protestants ascendant, she’s the wrong kind of Christian. Raised in the United Methodist Church as a Goldwater conservative, in college she embraced the movement’s modernist “peace with justice” wing just as liberal Protestantism began a long decline. But she did learn how to speak to conservative Protestants as the First Lady of Arkansas, and once upon a time a follower of an evangelical denomination—a Baptist named Bill Clinton—begged her to marry him.

Even as some recent polling shows the G.O.P. losing its edge with Catholics, Republicans will counter with their accomplishments and positions. Mr. Bush elevated two Catholics to the Supreme Court—in part on a bet that abortion will remain a helpful issue for Republicans. He named the first Hispanic U.S. Attorney General. G.O.P. positions against embryonic stem-cell research closely track Catholic Church stands. The gay-marriage issue—which Mr. Bush cynically leveraged, then dropped like a hot potato after the 2004 election—could be reinvigorated. No strategist ever went broke overestimating the Democrats’ capacity to shoot themselves in the foot on national security.

’Tis true. But count on this: With Catholics or any other faith-based voters, Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat best positioned to speak to their issues.

Speaking about a Republican-passed immigration bill that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally, or to aid an illegal immigrant, Mrs. Clinton said, “It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because the bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.”

Not coincidently, on the same day that Mrs. Clinton was channeling the late Catholic agitator Dorothy Day, the Democratic National Committee was disseminating via e-mail an opinion article voicing similar sentiments written by Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles.

The gambit shows the lengths to which Democrats will go to recapture Catholic voters, a quarter of the electorate, 55 percent of whom cast their ballots for President Bush in 2004 notwithstanding the Catholic faith of Democratic nominee John Kerry. It’s fair turnabout: During the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush paid a high-profile visit to the Vatican, and months later, some Catholic bishops urged voters to shun politicians like Mr. Kerry who support abortion rights.

Now, Democrats want to woo back the many Hispanic Catholic voters who deserted them in 2004, hence their emphasis on immigrants’ rights, ventured out of conviction but also with the hope of flipping into their column states like Colorado and New Mexico, which went narrowly for Mr. Bush two years ago.

Mrs. Clinton, however, has positioned herself way ahead of her party and any of her putative 2008 Presidential rivals by championing initiatives that appeal to middle-class, white-ethnic, suburban Catholic voters, especially married women (another group that swung heavily to the G.O.P. in 2004). She knows that Catholic defections kept the vote uncomfortably close in some heavily Catholic states that Mr. Kerry won—including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania—and contributed to Mr. Bush’s single-point victory in Iowa.

So we find Mrs. Clinton advocating “pro-family” legislation: for example, joining with the Senate’s two most conservative Catholics—Republicans Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania—to push for a bill authorizing research into the supposedly pernicious effects of electronic media on children. And there she was late last year, in a heavily Catholic Nassau County suburb, touting her bill to make cars safer for children. (As The New York Times noted this week, she has made herself an expert on the infrastructure issues of the aging suburb.) Need we mention her conciliatory language on abortion?

Strategists have been saying for some time that Mrs. Clinton will use her re-election campaign in the heavily Catholic areas of upstate New York as a laboratory for her expected 2008 Presidential bid. “Her spin is, ‘Hey, look, I can win Catholic votes. If I can win the western tier of New York, I can win Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,’” said veteran Democratic operative Hank Sheinkopf. If religion-tinged issues such as abortion and gay marriage can be neutralized in those areas, the Democrats can win on economic issues among hard-pressed Catholic men, Mr. Sheinkopf argues.

Illinois-born Mrs. Clinton, contra her Republican caricature as an angry liberal, can claim an advantage with Catholic and other so-called values voters: Unlike most Democrats, she sounds sincere when she employs Jesus language. Her problem regarding religion and the American electorate is not that she’s a heathen: In fact, she qualifies as one of the most overtly Christian politicians in the country. It’s just that, with conservative evangelical Protestants ascendant, she’s the wrong kind of Christian. Raised in the United Methodist Church as a Goldwater conservative, in college she embraced the movement’s modernist “peace with justice” wing just as liberal Protestantism began a long decline. But she did learn how to speak to conservative Protestants as the First Lady of Arkansas, and once upon a time a follower of an evangelical denomination—a Baptist named Bill Clinton—begged her to marry him.

Even as some recent polling shows the G.O.P. losing its edge with Catholics, Republicans will counter with their accomplishments and positions. Mr. Bush elevated two Catholics to the Supreme Court—in part on a bet that abortion will remain a helpful issue for Republicans. He named the first Hispanic U.S. Attorney General. G.O.P. positions against embryonic stem-cell research closely track Catholic Church stands. The gay-marriage issue—which Mr. Bush cynically leveraged, then dropped like a hot potato after the 2004 election—could be reinvigorated. No strategist ever went broke overestimating the Democrats’ capacity to shoot themselves in the foot on national security.

’Tis true. But count on this: With Catholics or any other faith-based voters, Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat best positioned to speak to their issues.

You’d be wrong.

With fewer than eight months before Election Day, Republicans have barely begun to think about why they want to knock him out—let alone how they’d do it.

Mr. Hevesi realizes as much. Thumbing his nose at the state Republican Committee, he recently declared that his re-election campaign was over.

“The comptroller election has been terminated,” said Mr. Hevesi, a garrulous, wonky, competitive fellow, speaking to Wise Guys a few weeks back, sounding half-joking and half-serious. “It’s a dull job and nobody should want it.”

The remark, while facetious, pointed to a larger truth: Even as candidates on both sides of the aisle had been maneuvering for months for the open gubernatorial and attorney-general seats, no Republican had stepped forward to challenge Mr. Hevesi.

That situation changed—finally—on March 8, when Saratoga County Treasurer J. Christopher Callaghan threw his hat into the ring, to little fanfare.

Noting the increasingly Democratic coloration of the state, Mr. Callaghan acknowledged that he would likely be taking a bullet for his party. “For me to suggest victory is a foregone conclusion would be inconsistent with my claim to competency in working with numbers,” he said in his announcement speech.

That dry assessment seems accurate.

It’s not as if Mr. Hevesi, on paper at least, appears invulnerable. A one-term incumbent, he won his race four years ago by a scant three points. To this day, to the chagrin of his supporters, he remains little known in large parts of the state. Yes, it’s hard to unseat an incumbent. Still, the Republicans haven’t developed any real case about why Mr. Hevesi shouldn’t keep his job.

In a half-hour conversation with Wise Guys, Mr. Callaghan, a smart, genteel local official who takes a conservative line on spending, mustered only middling criticisms of Mr. Hevesi’s performance. He said that Mr. Hevesi sometimes had resorted to “fiscal gimmickry” in his role as budget watchdog—such as when, in 2004, he pushed cities to delay making their contributions to the state’s pension funds until 2005 in order to make the state’s books look better.

“He was encouraging officials to fiddle with the numbers,” Mr. Callaghan said, which “bespeaks a political attitude that’s inconsistent with doing a good job” in what should be a nonpolitical green-eyeshades position.

Mr. Hevesi, for his part, criticizes the budget gimmicks of the state’s Republican Governor, George Pataki.

Mr. Callaghan also said that Mr. Hevesi’s audits of state authorities and other bodies had on occasion been “slanted politically,” although he declined to elaborate on the charge, saying that he had acquired the information on the down-low from staffers in Mr. Hevesi’s office.

So when will he be able to tell us more?

Others Republicans echo the “political” criticism.

Mr. Hevesi “is not really in the Arthur Levitt–Ned Regan mold,” said a G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate, John Faso, referring to two former State Comptrollers revered for their nonpartisanship. “He doesn’t check his partisanship at the door.”

Mr. Faso, who narrowly lost to Mr. Hevesi when both men ran for the seat being vacated by Carl McCall in 2002, observed that Mr. Hevesi recently has taken some swipes at President George W. Bush’s capital-gains tax cut, which Mr. Faso said has been “a real revenue generator for the state.”

It’s true—a proudly partisan liberal Democrat, Mr. Hevesi complains vociferously about the ballooning federal deficit. Just the other day on Staten Island, according to the Staten Island Advance, the State Comptroller criticized Mr. Bush for what he called the administration’s “deception” and “corruption.” That, no doubt, is a good re-election strategy with the President’s approval ratings in the mid-30’s nationally.

Mr. Hevesi also can point to a record of audits and other accomplishments: for example, an audit of a Nassau County school district that turned up $11 million in theft; the scotching of an improperly bid $4.9 billion state prescription-drug contract; and new guidelines to fix how state contracts are awarded. In a move that has garnered him praise even from the conservative Manhattan Institute, he advocates reform of the public authorities, which unaccountably circumvent state debt ceilings.

Nonetheless, good issues to exploit against Mr. Hevesi exist.

Chuck Bresher, research director of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, a private watchdog representing the liberal end of the business community, thinks Mr. Hevesi hasn’t been aggressive enough on pension reform—a pressing state issue—because he’s too close with the public employees’ unions.

The Republicans, if they want to be a party worthy of the name, should articulate a clear and forceful conservative case on these issues—and they should do it now.

If not, they should stop wasting voters’ time and cross-endorse Mr. Hevesi.

You’d be wrong.

With fewer than eight months before Election Day, Republicans have barely begun to think about why they want to knock him out—let alone how they’d do it.

Mr. Hevesi realizes as much. Thumbing his nose at the state Republican Committee, he recently declared that his re-election campaign was over.

“The comptroller election has been terminated,” said Mr. Hevesi, a garrulous, wonky, competitive fellow, speaking to Wise Guys a few weeks back, sounding half-joking and half-serious. “It’s a dull job and nobody should want it.”

The remark, while facetious, pointed to a larger truth: Even as candidates on both sides of the aisle had been maneuvering for months for the open gubernatorial and attorney-general seats, no Republican had stepped forward to challenge Mr. Hevesi.

That situation changed—finally—on March 8, when Saratoga County Treasurer J. Christopher Callaghan threw his hat into the ring, to little fanfare.

Noting the increasingly Democratic coloration of the state, Mr. Callaghan acknowledged that he would likely be taking a bullet for his party. “For me to suggest victory is a foregone conclusion would be inconsistent with my claim to competency in working with numbers,” he said in his announcement speech.

That dry assessment seems accurate.

It’s not as if Mr. Hevesi, on paper at least, appears invulnerable. A one-term incumbent, he won his race four years ago by a scant three points. To this day, to the chagrin of his supporters, he remains little known in large parts of the state. Yes, it’s hard to unseat an incumbent. Still, the Republicans haven’t developed any real case about why Mr. Hevesi shouldn’t keep his job.

In a half-hour conversation with Wise Guys, Mr. Callaghan, a smart, genteel local official who takes a conservative line on spending, mustered only middling criticisms of Mr. Hevesi’s performance. He said that Mr. Hevesi sometimes had resorted to “fiscal gimmickry” in his role as budget watchdog—such as when, in 2004, he pushed cities to delay making their contributions to the state’s pension funds until 2005 in order to make the state’s books look better.

“He was encouraging officials to fiddle with the numbers,” Mr. Callaghan said, which “bespeaks a political attitude that’s inconsistent with doing a good job” in what should be a nonpolitical green-eyeshades position.

Mr. Hevesi, for his part, criticizes the budget gimmicks of the state’s Republican Governor, George Pataki.

Mr. Callaghan also said that Mr. Hevesi’s audits of state authorities and other bodies had on occasion been “slanted politically,” although he declined to elaborate on the charge, saying that he had acquired the information on the down-low from staffers in Mr. Hevesi’s office.

So when will he be able to tell us more?

Others Republicans echo the “political” criticism.

Mr. Hevesi “is not really in the Arthur Levitt–Ned Regan mold,” said a G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate, John Faso, referring to two former State Comptrollers revered for their nonpartisanship. “He doesn’t check his partisanship at the door.”

Mr. Faso, who narrowly lost to Mr. Hevesi when both men ran for the seat being vacated by Carl McCall in 2002, observed that Mr. Hevesi recently has taken some swipes at President George W. Bush’s capital-gains tax cut, which Mr. Faso said has been “a real revenue generator for the state.”

It’s true—a proudly partisan liberal Democrat, Mr. Hevesi complains vociferously about the ballooning federal deficit. Just the other day on Staten Island, according to the Staten Island Advance, the State Comptroller criticized Mr. Bush for what he called the administration’s “deception” and “corruption.” That, no doubt, is a good re-election strategy with the President’s approval ratings in the mid-30’s nationally.

Mr. Hevesi also can point to a record of audits and other accomplishments: for example, an audit of a Nassau County school district that turned up $11 million in theft; the scotching of an improperly bid $4.9 billion state prescription-drug contract; and new guidelines to fix how state contracts are awarded. In a move that has garnered him praise even from the conservative Manhattan Institute, he advocates reform of the public authorities, which unaccountably circumvent state debt ceilings.

Nonetheless, good issues to exploit against Mr. Hevesi exist.

Chuck Bresher, research director of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, a private watchdog representing the liberal end of the business community, thinks Mr. Hevesi hasn’t been aggressive enough on pension reform—a pressing state issue—because he’s too close with the public employees’ unions.

The Republicans, if they want to be a party worthy of the name, should articulate a clear and forceful conservative case on these issues—and they should do it now.

If not, they should stop wasting voters’ time and cross-endorse Mr. Hevesi.

With his 6-foot, 11-inch frame stretched out over the chair of a midtown restaurant, the 40-year-old Dutchess County Assemblyman—a contender for the Republican gubernatorial nod—is one huge, handsome hunk of horseflesh, a real thrill for a handicapper in high heels, such as this columnist. What’s more, he displays an outsized ambition and a disposition that matches his height.

Mr. Manning makes much of his stature: He advertises himself as “the tallest elected official in the country” and named his reform effort “Stand Tall New York.”

But you have to wonder whether his political savvy has caught up with his impressive physique. Since declaring his candidacy last month, Mr. Manning has almost single-handedly revived an old-fashioned Irish pugilism in New York G.O.P. politics, with a nasty right hook that his foes find over the top—and even below the belt.

It’s not so much that at a Jan. 21 Republican gathering in Syracuse, he labeled Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Eliot Spitzer a “thug” and a “bully.” That’s by now a standard G.O.P. lash, first launched by state chairman Stephen Minarik after Mr. Spitzer’s alleged recent “threats” to mess with Wall Street titan John Whitehead.

Nope. It’s that Mr. Manning, a self-styled Reagan Republican, violates Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: “Never speak ill of a fellow Republican.”

At the press conference announcing his candidacy, Mr. Manning went after Governor George Pataki, castigating his administration for spending too much and giving away too much to special interests during the past 12 years.

Meeting with Wise Guys recently, Mr. Manning backpedaled, saying his jibes were “not necessarily a criticism of the Governor, but of those who think that in order for the Republican Party to win, we have to be Democrat lite.” In truth, he only dug himself a deeper hole: Who are the folks who argue for such fiscal profligacy? Various “consultants” and “pundits,” he said. He declined to name them, but the rest of us know them as Mr. Pataki’s supporters and henchmen.

At the Syracuse meeting, Mr. Manning also heaped scorn on William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, in an attack that he repeated for Wise Guys.

“If you’re looking for a candidate with blue blood and a pedigree from Wall Street, look elsewhere. My blood is red, and I come from Main Street,” he said. He called Mr. Weld “80 percent of Eliot Spitzer,” arguing the strategic point that running a social liberal like Mr. Weld would “suppress” turnout among the conservative upstate Republican base. (Note to Mr. Manning’s handlers: This is why most pros don’t let their candidates talk strategy. Yes, many have noted that Mr. Weld is wealthy, WASP-y and liberal, but pointing out those characteristics doesn’t get to the crux of why his positions might be wrong for New York.)

Mr. Manning reserved his most cutting remark, however, for a candidate who, like him, is positioned as a fiscal and social conservative: John Faso, a former Assembly Minority Leader who until recently was working as a lobbyist, helping the state, among other things, with transportation matters in Washington. “In the era of Jack Abramoff, is the standard-bearer of our party going to be a registered lobbyist?” Mr. Manning asked.

That’s tarring with a broad brush, like saying the G.O.P. shouldn’t nominate a businessman for office because of the sins of Kenneth Lay or Dennis Kozlowski. Mr. Manning qualified his remark by saying that he feared the Democrats would make an issue out of Mr. Faso’s profession, but still ….

As a little-known rural lawmaker whose marriage has just broken up, Mr. Manning would do better to concentrate on introducing himself and his fiscal nostrums to voters rather than on trashing his fellows. While he has made a start by amassing the endorsement of 15 Conservative Party county committees, he hasn’t made much headway among G.O.P. donors: His quarterly campaign-finance filing shows only $25,000 in his gubernatorial account; he acknowledges that his staffers are either being paid out of his Assembly campaign account or have donated their time and services. (He said he has five months to decide whether he wants to run for his present office.) Regarding this lack of cash, Mr. Manning—with a touch of chutzpah—compared himself to the Governor whose record he just had criticized, saying that he had “more [money] than George Pataki had at this time in 1994, when he took down a liberal icon [Mario Cuomo].”

Mr. Manning undoubtedly possesses many good ideas, and his instinct that the G.O.P. should run to the right, not the left, strikes one as on target. But with his thrusts at fellow Republicans, he shows that he has failed to absorb a basic schoolyard lesson: Sometimes, when you try to act like you’re so big, you can wind up appearing rather small.

With his 6-foot, 11-inch frame stretched out over the chair of a midtown restaurant, the 40-year-old Dutchess County Assemblyman—a contender for the Republican gubernatorial nod—is one huge, handsome hunk of horseflesh, a real thrill for a handicapper in high heels, such as this columnist. What’s more, he displays an outsized ambition and a disposition that matches his height.

Mr. Manning makes much of his stature: He advertises himself as “the tallest elected official in the country” and named his reform effort “Stand Tall New York.”

But you have to wonder whether his political savvy has caught up with his impressive physique. Since declaring his candidacy last month, Mr. Manning has almost single-handedly revived an old-fashioned Irish pugilism in New York G.O.P. politics, with a nasty right hook that his foes find over the top—and even below the belt.

It’s not so much that at a Jan. 21 Republican gathering in Syracuse, he labeled Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Eliot Spitzer a “thug” and a “bully.” That’s by now a standard G.O.P. lash, first launched by state chairman Stephen Minarik after Mr. Spitzer’s alleged recent “threats” to mess with Wall Street titan John Whitehead.

Nope. It’s that Mr. Manning, a self-styled Reagan Republican, violates Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: “Never speak ill of a fellow Republican.”

At the press conference announcing his candidacy, Mr. Manning went after Governor George Pataki, castigating his administration for spending too much and giving away too much to special interests during the past 12 years.

Meeting with Wise Guys recently, Mr. Manning backpedaled, saying his jibes were “not necessarily a criticism of the Governor, but of those who think that in order for the Republican Party to win, we have to be Democrat lite.” In truth, he only dug himself a deeper hole: Who are the folks who argue for such fiscal profligacy? Various “consultants” and “pundits,” he said. He declined to name them, but the rest of us know them as Mr. Pataki’s supporters and henchmen.

At the Syracuse meeting, Mr. Manning also heaped scorn on William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, in an attack that he repeated for Wise Guys.

“If you’re looking for a candidate with blue blood and a pedigree from Wall Street, look elsewhere. My blood is red, and I come from Main Street,” he said. He called Mr. Weld “80 percent of Eliot Spitzer,” arguing the strategic point that running a social liberal like Mr. Weld would “suppress” turnout among the conservative upstate Republican base. (Note to Mr. Manning’s handlers: This is why most pros don’t let their candidates talk strategy. Yes, many have noted that Mr. Weld is wealthy, WASP-y and liberal, but pointing out those characteristics doesn’t get to the crux of why his positions might be wrong for New York.)

Mr. Manning reserved his most cutting remark, however, for a candidate who, like him, is positioned as a fiscal and social conservative: John Faso, a former Assembly Minority Leader who until recently was working as a lobbyist, helping the state, among other things, with transportation matters in Washington. “In the era of Jack Abramoff, is the standard-bearer of our party going to be a registered lobbyist?” Mr. Manning asked.

That’s tarring with a broad brush, like saying the G.O.P. shouldn’t nominate a businessman for office because of the sins of Kenneth Lay or Dennis Kozlowski. Mr. Manning qualified his remark by saying that he feared the Democrats would make an issue out of Mr. Faso’s profession, but still ….

As a little-known rural lawmaker whose marriage has just broken up, Mr. Manning would do better to concentrate on introducing himself and his fiscal nostrums to voters rather than on trashing his fellows. While he has made a start by amassing the endorsement of 15 Conservative Party county committees, he hasn’t made much headway among G.O.P. donors: His quarterly campaign-finance filing shows only $25,000 in his gubernatorial account; he acknowledges that his staffers are either being paid out of his Assembly campaign account or have donated their time and services. (He said he has five months to decide whether he wants to run for his present office.) Regarding this lack of cash, Mr. Manning—with a touch of chutzpah—compared himself to the Governor whose record he just had criticized, saying that he had “more [money] than George Pataki had at this time in 1994, when he took down a liberal icon [Mario Cuomo].”

Mr. Manning undoubtedly possesses many good ideas, and his instinct that the G.O.P. should run to the right, not the left, strikes one as on target. But with his thrusts at fellow Republicans, he shows that he has failed to absorb a basic schoolyard lesson: Sometimes, when you try to act like you’re so big, you can wind up appearing rather small.

During the Presidential campaign of 2004, John Spencer—one of the last Republicans standing who wants to run against Senator Hillary Clinton—got involved in the group Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry. While Mr. Spencer didn’t serve on a Swift boat and wasn’t involved in Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran ads attacking Mr. Kerry, Mr. Spencer has hired the Swift-boat veterans’ media advisor, Chris LaCivita, to fashion his own ads.

In a telephone interview with Wise Guys, Mr. Spencer drew parallels between what he described as Mr. Kerry’s attitudes toward war and peace and those of Mrs. Clinton, which he said emanated from their “core philosophy” as liberal Democrats and were bad for the country.

“John Kerry is a liar,” Mr. Spencer said. “That’s something I’ll never stop saying. Hillary Clinton didn’t live John Kerry’s life, but she’s right there with him on all the issues.”

He said Mrs. Clinton is playing a “sneaky, sly” game of “undercutting” President Bush and the military, whether it’s by taking part in debates criticizing military operations or the conduct of American troops at Abu Ghraib, or “standing by silently” when Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois compared the American prison at Guantánamo to the gulag. It’s an old habit for her, Mr. Spencer said. During the Vietnam War, “she was part of the undercutting then, too.”

Mr. Spencer, a relative unknown despite being the former mayor of Yonkers, one of the state’s largest cities, has seen his star rise since Jeanine Pirro dropped out of the Senate race earlier this month. His hard-edged, unapologetically moralistic rhetoric has attracted support of elements of the Conservative Party, and Republican Party officials have begun to praise him.

Mrs. Clinton’s camp, nonetheless, seems intent on ignoring him. “Every day we read about different Republicans entering and re-entering the field,” a Clinton advisor, Howard Wolfson, wrote in an e-mail message. But Mr. Wolfson has acknowledged the race’s Vietnam subtext. “Any of the nominees will be able to benefit from the Swift boat groups and will be able to raise money nationally,” he told The New York Times last month.

No serious prognosticator gives Mr. Spencer—or anyone else the Republicans might run, for that matter—much of a chance of unseating a popular incumbent such as Mrs. Clinton. Whether Mr. Spencer’s moralistic denunciations of Mrs. Clinton’s decades-old anti-war activism will strike a chord among New York voters, however, will depend on whether Mr. Spencer can relate them to the present war.

Mr. Spencer said that he hadn’t read the full text of Mrs. Clinton’s recent 1,600-word missive to her supporters, in which she tempered her support of the war as some Democrats, notably Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, began demanding a quick withdrawal from Iraq. But he said—not unreasonably—that the excerpts he had read struck him as “typical Clintonism, trying to be all things to all people. When you’re all things to all people, you’re nothing to anybody.” He added that Mrs. Clinton should “stop trying to appease the left wing of the Democratic Party.”

There was, and continues to be, a constituency for such a hawkish view in New York. In 2004, Mr. Bush—running in part on his war record and in particular on his posture against terrorism—increased his vote in New York by almost 727,000 compared with his vote in 2000. Mr. Kerry, by contrast, won only 547,000 more votes in 2004 than Vice President Al Gore did in the election before. While support for the war has diminished since then, there was a reason why Mrs. Clinton and Senator Charles Schumer both voted for authorizing the conflict (and later for the $87 billion to continue it) in the first place.

They may say now that they were tricked by “misleading” intelligence put out by the administration, but that changes matters little. Neither has seconded Mr. Murtha’s call for an immediate pullout. Nor do such protestations as New York’s Senators have made, for example, provide an argument about what to do with the 150,000 troops in Iraq, or about which security posture America must assume in the Middle East, the source of the terrorism affecting us.

Mrs. Clinton’s bromides about “repudiating torture,” “reforming intelligence and its use by decision makers” and “rejecting the administration’s doctrine of preemptive war and their preference to going it alone” constitute a critique of Mr. Bush’s policy, not an alternative plan.

If Mr. Spencer elicits such arguments and possible solutions from Mrs. Clinton, who some say is seeking to lead her party to the White House in 2008, he will have performed a signal service. That might be a good reason to fight the Vietnam War again.

During the Presidential campaign of 2004, John Spencer—one of the last Republicans standing who wants to run against Senator Hillary Clinton—got involved in the group Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry. While Mr. Spencer didn’t serve on a Swift boat and wasn’t involved in Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran ads attacking Mr. Kerry, Mr. Spencer has hired the Swift-boat veterans’ media advisor, Chris LaCivita, to fashion his own ads.

In a telephone interview with Wise Guys, Mr. Spencer drew parallels between what he described as Mr. Kerry’s attitudes toward war and peace and those of Mrs. Clinton, which he said emanated from their “core philosophy” as liberal Democrats and were bad for the country.

“John Kerry is a liar,” Mr. Spencer said. “That’s something I’ll never stop saying. Hillary Clinton didn’t live John Kerry’s life, but she’s right there with him on all the issues.”

He said Mrs. Clinton is playing a “sneaky, sly” game of “undercutting” President Bush and the military, whether it’s by taking part in debates criticizing military operations or the conduct of American troops at Abu Ghraib, or “standing by silently” when Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois compared the American prison at Guantánamo to the gulag. It’s an old habit for her, Mr. Spencer said. During the Vietnam War, “she was part of the undercutting then, too.”

Mr. Spencer, a relative unknown despite being the former mayor of Yonkers, one of the state’s largest cities, has seen his star rise since Jeanine Pirro dropped out of the Senate race earlier this month. His hard-edged, unapologetically moralistic rhetoric has attracted support of elements of the Conservative Party, and Republican Party officials have begun to praise him.

Mrs. Clinton’s camp, nonetheless, seems intent on ignoring him. “Every day we read about different Republicans entering and re-entering the field,” a Clinton advisor, Howard Wolfson, wrote in an e-mail message. But Mr. Wolfson has acknowledged the race’s Vietnam subtext. “Any of the nominees will be able to benefit from the Swift boat groups and will be able to raise money nationally,” he told The New York Times last month.

No serious prognosticator gives Mr. Spencer—or anyone else the Republicans might run, for that matter—much of a chance of unseating a popular incumbent such as Mrs. Clinton. Whether Mr. Spencer’s moralistic denunciations of Mrs. Clinton’s decades-old anti-war activism will strike a chord among New York voters, however, will depend on whether Mr. Spencer can relate them to the present war.

Mr. Spencer said that he hadn’t read the full text of Mrs. Clinton’s recent 1,600-word missive to her supporters, in which she tempered her support of the war as some Democrats, notably Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, began demanding a quick withdrawal from Iraq. But he said—not unreasonably—that the excerpts he had read struck him as “typical Clintonism, trying to be all things to all people. When you’re all things to all people, you’re nothing to anybody.” He added that Mrs. Clinton should “stop trying to appease the left wing of the Democratic Party.”

There was, and continues to be, a constituency for such a hawkish view in New York. In 2004, Mr. Bush—running in part on his war record and in particular on his posture against terrorism—increased his vote in New York by almost 727,000 compared with his vote in 2000. Mr. Kerry, by contrast, won only 547,000 more votes in 2004 than Vice President Al Gore did in the election before. While support for the war has diminished since then, there was a reason why Mrs. Clinton and Senator Charles Schumer both voted for authorizing the conflict (and later for the $87 billion to continue it) in the first place.

They may say now that they were tricked by “misleading” intelligence put out by the administration, but that changes matters little. Neither has seconded Mr. Murtha’s call for an immediate pullout. Nor do such protestations as New York’s Senators have made, for example, provide an argument about what to do with the 150,000 troops in Iraq, or about which security posture America must assume in the Middle East, the source of the terrorism affecting us.

Mrs. Clinton’s bromides about “repudiating torture,” “reforming intelligence and its use by decision makers” and “rejecting the administration’s doctrine of preemptive war and their preference to going it alone” constitute a critique of Mr. Bush’s policy, not an alternative plan.

If Mr. Spencer elicits such arguments and possible solutions from Mrs. Clinton, who some say is seeking to lead her party to the White House in 2008, he will have performed a signal service. That might be a good reason to fight the Vietnam War again.

As all 62 Republican county chairmen get set to meet on Dec. 12, ostensibly to decide on a gubernatorial candidate, their party’s alliance with the state’s Conservatives—whose support has been critical to the G.O.P. since the 1970’s—is in jeopardy.

That’s because Governor George Pataki’s handpicked state chairman, Stephen Minarik, has backed the gubernatorial candidacy of William Weld and the U.S. Senate candidacy of Jeanine Pirro, both of whom Conservative leaders—and more than a few Republicans—find unacceptably liberal. What’s more, Mr. Minarik has stated in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want any primaries.

Mr. Minarik’s maneuvering comes as G.O.P. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has been boosting a gubernatorial bid by newly minted Republican Tom Golisano. The Rochester-area billionaire, a three-time Independence Party gubernatorial candidate and avid Pataki detractor, sports some support upstate, but many Republicans and Conservatives consider him as bad as Mr. Weld. Mr. Bruno apparently thinks that Mr. Golisano could help him to maintain his tenuous hold on the Senate.

The situation has alienated many Conservatives. Consider, for a moment, the possibility that the state Conservative Party might endorse Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi if he got the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year.

Sound farfetched? While the Conservatives seldom give their nod to Democrats, even for local offices, their relationship with the G.O.P. has deteriorated to the point where such speculation has been heard in Nassau circles. Conservative Party chief Michael Long backs Mr. Suozzi’s “Fix Albany” initiative.

“The Republicans are set up for a disaster,” said Bronx County Conservative chairman William Newmark. Mr. Newmark added that Mr. Weld has “no chance” of getting the Conservative endorsement because of his support for gay marriage, among other issues.

As for Ms. Pirro, who has come under pressure from Republicans to withdraw from the Senate race in favor of a run for State Attorney General, Mr. Long pronounced her candidacy in a “meltdown.” Mr. Newmark also dismissed Ms. Pirro’s chances, saying that he was “highly offended” when, during an interview with his steering committee, she indicated that she had “to think about” whether she could support Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. “She’s a joke,” he said.

Mr. Long doesn’t want to tell the G.O.P. what it should do, but he wishes the Republican leaders wouldn’t jump the gun on Dec. 12—a position he shares with Mr. Bruno, who has called on his party not to take any votes on that date.

“I don’t necessarily think they have to hold the meeting,” Mr. Long told Wise Guys last week. “I don’t believe they have to come to a conclusion in this early stage of the game. Who knows if a primary is the worst thing in the world?”

Mr. Minarik, interestingly, started wavering about a Dec. 12 vote when the one gubernatorial candidate who appears to have strong support among Conservative and Republican chairmen around the state, former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso, began pushing for it.

Mr. Faso said Friday that “postponing this and waiting for the future is a prescription for winding up with a party in a condition weaker than it needs to be,” adding: “I would like to have the vote today if I could.”

Monroe County Conservative chairman Tom Cooke—a foe of Mr. Golisano and a friend of Mr. Minarik—argues that Mr. Golisano would fail as a G.O.P. candidate because of his libertarian views on social issues. Mr. Weld, he added, “has no grassroots support.” He called Mr. Faso “the savior.”

Mr. Minarik, for his part, recently sniped that Mr. Faso “is in la-la land.” Even so, Rockland County G.O.P. chairman Vincent Reda, a party vice chairman, praises Mr. Minarik’s leadership. “I believe Bill Weld is the front-runner,” he said. “He’s raised over a million dollars the first time out the door. That certainly opens some eyes.”

Mr. Reda sounded less than conciliatory about the Conservative Party.

“We’ve gotten our house in order. Perhaps they should get their house in order,” he said. “They never supported Rudy Giuliani. He went pretty far. They never supported Michael Bloomberg. He did O.K.”

It’s true: The Conservative nod doesn’t aid candidates in New York City. But it’s also true that the Republican strategy of renting the party flag to social liberal Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t generated any swells for state G.O.P. candidates.

Does the party really think that the liberal Mr. Weld would animate its rank and file? Wouldn’t a “bingo for billionaires” bid by Mr. Golisano further cheapen the party brand?

One wonders where the lame-duck Governor, his man Mr. Minarik and their antagonist Mr. Bruno are taking their party. They shouldn’t be surprised if next year the Conservative Party eschews their embrace for someone like Mr. Suozzi.

As all 62 Republican county chairmen get set to meet on Dec. 12, ostensibly to decide on a gubernatorial candidate, their party’s alliance with the state’s Conservatives—whose support has been critical to the G.O.P. since the 1970’s—is in jeopardy.

That’s because Governor George Pataki’s handpicked state chairman, Stephen Minarik, has backed the gubernatorial candidacy of William Weld and the U.S. Senate candidacy of Jeanine Pirro, both of whom Conservative leaders—and more than a few Republicans—find unacceptably liberal. What’s more, Mr. Minarik has stated in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want any primaries.

Mr. Minarik’s maneuvering comes as G.O.P. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has been boosting a gubernatorial bid by newly minted Republican Tom Golisano. The Rochester-area billionaire, a three-time Independence Party gubernatorial candidate and avid Pataki detractor, sports some support upstate, but many Republicans and Conservatives consider him as bad as Mr. Weld. Mr. Bruno apparently thinks that Mr. Golisano could help him to maintain his tenuous hold on the Senate.

The situation has alienated many Conservatives. Consider, for a moment, the possibility that the state Conservative Party might endorse Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi if he got the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year.

Sound farfetched? While the Conservatives seldom give their nod to Democrats, even for local offices, their relationship with the G.O.P. has deteriorated to the point where such speculation has been heard in Nassau circles. Conservative Party chief Michael Long backs Mr. Suozzi’s “Fix Albany” initiative.

“The Republicans are set up for a disaster,” said Bronx County Conservative chairman William Newmark. Mr. Newmark added that Mr. Weld has “no chance” of getting the Conservative endorsement because of his support for gay marriage, among other issues.

As for Ms. Pirro, who has come under pressure from Republicans to withdraw from the Senate race in favor of a run for State Attorney General, Mr. Long pronounced her candidacy in a “meltdown.” Mr. Newmark also dismissed Ms. Pirro’s chances, saying that he was “highly offended” when, during an interview with his steering committee, she indicated that she had “to think about” whether she could support Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. “She’s a joke,” he said.

Mr. Long doesn’t want to tell the G.O.P. what it should do, but he wishes the Republican leaders wouldn’t jump the gun on Dec. 12—a position he shares with Mr. Bruno, who has called on his party not to take any votes on that date.

“I don’t necessarily think they have to hold the meeting,” Mr. Long told Wise Guys last week. “I don’t believe they have to come to a conclusion in this early stage of the game. Who knows if a primary is the worst thing in the world?”

Mr. Minarik, interestingly, started wavering about a Dec. 12 vote when the one gubernatorial candidate who appears to have strong support among Conservative and Republican chairmen around the state, former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso, began pushing for it.

Mr. Faso said Friday that “postponing this and waiting for the future is a prescription for winding up with a party in a condition weaker than it needs to be,” adding: “I would like to have the vote today if I could.”

Monroe County Conservative chairman Tom Cooke—a foe of Mr. Golisano and a friend of Mr. Minarik—argues that Mr. Golisano would fail as a G.O.P. candidate because of his libertarian views on social issues. Mr. Weld, he added, “has no grassroots support.” He called Mr. Faso “the savior.”

Mr. Minarik, for his part, recently sniped that Mr. Faso “is in la-la land.” Even so, Rockland County G.O.P. chairman Vincent Reda, a party vice chairman, praises Mr. Minarik’s leadership. “I believe Bill Weld is the front-runner,” he said. “He’s raised over a million dollars the first time out the door. That certainly opens some eyes.”

Mr. Reda sounded less than conciliatory about the Conservative Party.

“We’ve gotten our house in order. Perhaps they should get their house in order,” he said. “They never supported Rudy Giuliani. He went pretty far. They never supported Michael Bloomberg. He did O.K.”

It’s true: The Conservative nod doesn’t aid candidates in New York City. But it’s also true that the Republican strategy of renting the party flag to social liberal Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t generated any swells for state G.O.P. candidates.

Does the party really think that the liberal Mr. Weld would animate its rank and file? Wouldn’t a “bingo for billionaires” bid by Mr. Golisano further cheapen the party brand?

One wonders where the lame-duck Governor, his man Mr. Minarik and their antagonist Mr. Bruno are taking their party. They shouldn’t be surprised if next year the Conservative Party eschews their embrace for someone like Mr. Suozzi.