HAGEL VS. McCONNELL
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) says he has the support of 34 Senate Republicans, more than the 28 needed to keep the chairmanship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.), meanwhile, claims to be in the low 20s with 8 undecided Senators. Even on his own account, then, Hagel would need to get almost all of the undecideds. McConnell has to be favored to win.

Should he? It can reasonably be argued that campaign committee chairmen must be held accountable when an election goes badly. McConnell's House counterpart, Rep. John Linder (R., Ga.), was turned out. And McConnell is open to more specific criticism as well. He supported the budget deal that helped to depress the Republican base on the ground that Republicans had to go home to campaign. (Hagel pushed all year for higher spending on the IMF and farmers; he got what he wanted, then voted against the deal.)

A number of the criticisms of McConnell seem pretty dubious. Supposedly he subordinated Republicans' interest in winning seats to his zeal to block campaign-finance reform, directing money toward defeating campaign-finance reformer Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) and starving the campaign of Feingold ally Rep. Linda Smith (R., Wash.). McConnell's judgment appears to have been the correct one: the Wisconsin race was more winnable than the Washington won. Mark Neumann got 48.4 per cent of the vote to Feingold's 50.6 per cent. With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that Republicans should have spent more in Wisconsin (and in the Nevada race, still being disputed).

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), meanwhile, blew Smith out of the water (58.3 vs. 41.7 per cent). Smith was always a longshot: even most of the optimistic projections of a four-seat Republican pick-up wrote her off. Nor does McConnell's focus on the Senate race in his home state look parochial: Rep. Jim Bunning (R., Ky.) barely won it.

Neither McConnell nor Hagel was able to get back to us by presstime. But as recounted by Gerald Seib in today's Wall Street Journal, Hagel is promising to focus less on soft money and negative ads. That set of priorities seems more tailored to prissy media sensibilities than to the task of defending Republican incumbents in 2000.

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