Danny Hakim at the Empire Zone reports that New York State Republicans, unsurprisingly, are "pining" for a Giuliani nomination -- since it looks to be about the only thing that could rescue their Albany fortunes at this point. In recent presidential election years, the extra turnout has helped Democrats in swing districts; the state's GOP dinosaurs are hoping that a Rudy candidacy would turn that trend on its head. Serph Maltese, himself an endangered old elephant, sounds positively giddy:

Having Mr. Giuliani at the top of the ticket, he said, “ensures that we hold the State Senate,” which would be no small victory. The Senate is the Republican Party’s last statewide power base — and one that Gov. Eliot Spitzer covets. “You know we will certainly take aim at the Klein seat, the Nancy Larraine Hoffmann seat,” Mr. Maltese said, referring to the Bronx-Westchester seat of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Democrat, and the Syracuse-area seat once held by Ms. Hoffmann, a Republican. Mr. Maltese added that he also thought the party could win back the Westchester seat that Nicholas A. Spano lost last year.

The question is whether a candidate who supports gun control and the right to abortion, and who may very well be excommunicated from the Catholic church -- whether for the abortion stance, his adultery, or both -- could really turn out New York's conservative base. Certainly, his fraught history with the state's Conservative Party doesn't bode well for those hopes. Still, last month's Q-poll found Giuliani performing a good ten points better in rural and suburban districts than any other Republican candidate - turning them from swing areas back into Republican strongholds. Whether Rudy can maintain that kind of support, and whether it would translate into a boost for down-ticket Republicans, are open questions. Certainly one could posit that voters in New York are so fed up with the Albany GOP that there might be a lot of ticket-splitting. On the other hand, these state Senate races tend to be very close, and every bit of extra Republican turnout will help the party of Joe Bruno. As for the notion that "Giuliani can't possibly win the nomination" -- I agree with that assessment when it refers to the GOP as currently constituted. However, we may well be witnessing a significant change in that very constitution. Fiscal conservatives, movement intellectuals, and right-wing power junkies are showing a sudden and unprecedented willingness to consider leaving their party's old religious right base behind -- and the religious right, believe it or not, may not be powerful enough to stop them. There's a great deal of flux and chaos on the Republican side at the moment, but there is certainly a path that could lead to a Giuliani nomination, astonishing as it may seem. And that would cause headaches for New York State Democrats. Would it doom our chances to take the state Senate? I don't think so. But it would make things significantly more difficult.