You know the GOP in Ohio is in bad shape when, after decades of Republican race baiting their fortunes depend on a really big  Black guy. Mr. Will's column is as much about the decreptude of the Republican Party in Ohio as an introduction to Ken Blackwell.

In 1998 party elders pressured Blackwell into stepping aside to clear the path to the governorship for Bob Taft -- great-great-grandson of a U.S. attorney general, great-grandson of a president, grandson and son of U.S. senators. Today, Taft's job approval rating has plunged to 18 percent among Republican voters . The rest of the electorate is more hostile. Republicans hold 12 of 18 U.S. House seats and both Senate seats. Unfortunately for Ohio Republicans, they also control both elected branches of the state government, and their record of scandals and un-Republican governance -- substantial tax and spending increases -- have Blackwell, a 6-foot-5, 255-pound former college football player (Xavier University in Cincinnati), running against his party's record.

Also noticed something  can use to make a useful point; Mr. Will says it's a "conservative axiom":

Any political group or institution that is not ideologically conservative will become, over time, liberal.

Okay, now we know "liberal" is jargon. But the reason supporting this "axiom" is

That is so because, in the absence of a principled adherence to limited government, careerism -- the political idea of the unthoughtful -- will cause incumbents to use public spending to purchase job security.

Would those who accept this conservative axiom aggree with the statement "If I were an incumbent the only thing that would keep me from becoming corrupt would be a principled adherence to limited government." I think they would admit it to be true privately; I think the really principled ones would admit it publically. Since we are each  our own best example of being human, we assume everyone works the way we do. Statements about human nature are always grounded in self-perception. They are always projections to some degree.

This kind of projection is behind the upsurge in earmarks under the Republican regime. Every Republican went into office thinking that's the sort of thing Democrats did, so they're going to do it too. Each and every one of them.

It's the reason Democrats kept getting blindsided in Congress, why it took so long for them to even react to being totally excluded from the decision process in both houses. They couldn't conceive of the tactics being used against them.

Okay, back to Blackwell. He's got a hard way to go.

His opponent, U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, is evidence that Democrats have been educated by electoral disappointments. Strickland represents a culturally conservative district that extends from the Ohio River almost to Youngstown, a district Bush carried by just two points in 2000 and 2004. One of nine children of a steelworker father, Strickland is reliably liberal on most matters but also has the NRA's "A" rating and voted to ban partial-birth abortions.

Rep. Strickland's Democratic support should be pretty firm. It's actually possible for a principled liberal to fully support the N.R.A. agenda...though it would be an error in judgement, IMO. And since Mr. Will raised the race issue

He appeals to blacks by being black and because many blacks are cultural conservatives