Well, here's a push poll that didn't work.

First someone at Free Republic posted this poll question and got just the result you'd expect:

Let's just say that Hillary (or someone equally as vile) gets the Democrat nomination and a pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun, pro-defense, pro-borders, pro-small government, pro-low taxes, peace through superior firepower patriot gets the Republican nod. Who would you vote for in the general?

"The Patriot with the big 'R'" won in a landslide.

Then there was a follow-up:

Looks like our true blue conservative did pretty well in our prior poll. Let's now see what happens if we nominate a social liberal who's okay with abortion, gay unions and gay rights is a gun grabber and is weak on illegal immigration. Who do you vote for in the general?

Right now, "The social liberal with the big 'R'" has 32.5%.

Surely that wasn't supposed to happen. Surely he was supposed to be in single digits. That tells you how many red-meat, litmus-test conservatives would still vote for Giuliani after learning his positions on domestic issues. We keep being told that all that prevents him from plummeting in the GOP polls is ignorance of those positions, but apparently that's not the case -- here are those positions, presented in the worst possible light, and he still gets a third of the far-far-far-right vote.

That's his formula for victory: a big chunk of these people plus a much bigger chunk of the less extreme Republicans -- and remember, in a multi-candidate field, he doesn't need a majority in the early primaries. And then in the general election he picks up independents and Democrats -- see the scary results in the new Quinnipiac poll (emphasis added):

Giuliani tops Clinton 55 - 38 percent in Red states, which voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election, and ties her 46 - 46 percent in Blue states, which went Democratic in 2004. He gets 44 percent to Clinton's 45 percent in Purple states, where the margin in 2004 was less than 7 percent....

I'm going to keep saying it: Democrats have to define Giuliani now -- as scary, as Bush Redux, as something. McCain, too, though I see his star fading. Maureen Dowd is defining Barack Obama and (re-)defining Hillary Clinton before they can define themselves; Fox, by sponsoring an early Democratic debate, has the franchise to do the same for the rest of the Democratic field. Who's going to define John and (especially) Rudy? Or are we just going to let them define themselves?

****

UPDATE: Jesus' General envisions a fully Fox-framed Democrat(ic) debate.