In a blog entry posted yesterday in the Weekly Standard, William Kristol demonstrated precisely the sort of political myopia that landed the Republican Party in its present minority doldrums and the nation in the death grip of a cabal of Democrat statists in Congress led by socialist ideologue in the Oval Office.

The new Rasmussen poll for the 2010 Arizona GOP Primary—John McCain 45%, J. D. Hayworth 43%—will generate a fair amount of buzz. But August is a long way away, and I assume that when McCain gets back to Arizona and campaigns, he’ll pull it out.

That’s a pretty big assumption. The mood in this nation is ugly and getting uglier and it will be positively hideous if Congress passes anything that even remotely smacks of amnesty for illegal immigrants. There will be no shortage of sound bites and video clips to remind voters that McCain was one of the principal backers of an amnesty bill that failed passage  a few years ago precisely because of the backlash against it.

Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist conservative challenger? Sarah Palin. I predict that Palin will come to Arizona next summer to campaign for McCain, will make an impassioned case for him, and will help him win. She will thereby repay McCain for his confidence in picking her last year, help keep McCain as a crucial voice in the Senate for a strong foreign policy, and get credit for being a different kind of populist conservative—a Reaganite, not a Buchananite, populist—than the immigration-obsessed, voter-alienating (he was ousted in 2006 in a Republican district) Hayworth.

WOW. Where to begin? I suppose whether or not Palin campaigns on behalf of John McCain will depend largely on three things: her political stock, his political stock and the political atmosphere in general. If hers is up, his is down and the atmosphere poisonous to Democrats and RINOs - a very good possibility - Kristol can count on losing any bet he’s willing to make that the Arctic Fox will stump for McCain - all the more so because she owes him nothing.

Kristol labors under the delusion that McCain’s decision to pick Palin was based on his confidence in her leadership capabilities and political capital when, in truth, McCain chose Palin for no reason other than the fact his campaign was flagging big time and he needed to bolster his support among the conservative base of the Republican Party. If anything, it was a purely cynical move and this much was demonstrated in the next two months as campaign operatives went out of their way to keep her shackled and muzzled lest she taint McCain’s bipartisan eggnog with a 200-proof shot of Reagan conservatism. As it turns out, even Sarah Palin was not enough to propel McCain to victory over Obama, although I suspect the election results would have been far worse - an Obama landslide - had she been absent from the ticket.

Speaking of Reagan conservatism, Kristol’s assessment of McCain would be more accurate if, instead of comparing McCain with Reagan, he had contrasted them. I knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of mine. Actually, I never met him and I can’t say that were friends although I’m pretty sure we would have been friends if we had met. But I can say this: John McCain is no Ronald Reagan. Let’s not forget that he and his liberal buddy Joe Lieberman are enthusiastic proponents of Cap & Trade, something Reagan would have regarded as toxic to the economy as the bubonic plague is to humanity.

As for J.D. Hayworth, Kristol’s assertion that he lost his Congressional seat in 2006 because he was a Buchananite xenophobe is fatuous by any reckoning. Did he not even bother to acquaint himself with the basic outline of Hayworth’s political career?

John David Hayworth was first elected to Congress in the 1994 conservative tsunami known as the Gingrich Revolution. He was a stalwart conservative then and, by all accounts, appears to be no less stalwart today. Then - as now - he sounded the alarm on the illegal immigrant issue and has insistently clanged that bell ever since. Unfortunately for Hayworth, questionable accounting practices on the part of his political action committee coupled with his association with Jack Abramoff weakened him sufficiently for a Democrat challenger to pick him off in 2006 - the year the conservative base lashed out at ALL Republicans for the swinish behavior so many of them exhibited a decade after taking over Congress. Nor did it help Hayworth that several key Republicans crossed the aisle and endorsed his challenger. Their gripe? He wasn’t bipartisan enough.

Fast forward five years: the era of bipartisanship is dead, having been hacked to pieces by Obama, Reid and Pelosi. Congress - as a reflection of the nation - is more bitterly and solidly divided than at any point in history since the Civil War.

Another amnesty bill for illegals - one that would make 12 million of them legitimate Democrat voters - looms on the horizon. McCain supported the first attempt at amnesty and there is no guarantee he will not lock arms with Lindsey Graham in support of the next attempt - although I would not be surprised if he backed off from it in light of the current popular sentiment.

Whether Kristol wishes to admit it or not, after Cap & Trade the next hot-button issue will be illegal immigration and it is to J.D. Hayworth’s credit that he has been on the right side of this issue all along. Alas for McCain, his earlier advocacy of amnesty for illegals will haunt him with far greater insistence than Abramoff or questionable accounting will ever haunt Hayworth.

Thus the virtual dead heat between the two in the Rasmussen polls. As the economy continues to collapse and the mood of the nation continues to sour, McCain will have a very clear choice: tack to the right and cloak himself in the Reagan mantle or continue to bask in the Maverick limelight. I suspect he’ll try to have it both ways. If so, he’ll fail. The conservative base has gotten a whole lot wiser in the past five years and can spot a RINO in a Reagan suit a mile away. If events unfold as I believe they will, you can expect Hayworth to start edging out Maverick when the primaries roll around.

And the Arctic Fox? She never forgot the screwing she got at the hands of the McCain campaign and while her public persona with regard to John McCain will ever and always be one of graciousness and deference, I suspect that on the inside she’s itching for payback. Does this mean she’ll end up stumping for Hayworth?

You betcha!