Way back on May 13, I predicted that Florida would be the setting for "the next Republican civil war." Perhaps that was an understatement. A more updated assessment has been offered by David Frum, the conservative commentator and former George W. Bush speechwriter. He writes on his blog that "Republican fratricide" in Florida will result in a "spectacular bloodbath."

Just as in the recent New York congressional race - where conservative-versus-moderate fratricide screwed things up so badly that a Democrat wound up winning a House seat that hadn't gone Democratic since around 1870 - the escalating Florida feud between conservative purists and moderate pragmatists in the GOP Senate race threatens to imperil the party unity that Republicans will need in order to recoup at the ballot box in 2010.

Just as in the New York race, where national movement conservatives fatally undercut the GOP establishment's preferred House candidate, the same conservative forces (talk radio, prominent right-wing magazines, Washington interest groups) are ratcheting up their attacks on Charlie Crist, the lame duck Florida governor who is seeking the '10 Senate nomination with backing from the party establishment. From the purists' perspective, Crist deserves to be taken down because he committed the ultimate sin: He not only took President Obama's economic stimulus money last winter, he even hugged Obama at a public rally.

The chosen vehicle for conservative ire, Senate primary challenger Mario Rubio (a former Florida House Speaker who is reputedly close to 100 percent pure), has now posted a web advertisement featuring footage of Crist and Obama at that rally. What better way to inflame Florida's conservative Republican electorate - which will dominate the voting in next August's GOP primary?

»  More Florida fratricide

The Obama administration's decision, announced Friday, to prosecute the avowed 9/11 mastermind in federal court struck me as a no-brainer that didn't require any comment. After all, the U.S. Constitution and the American rule of law - which we routinely tout as models for the rest of the world - seem more than adequate to the task. But I am now inspired to comment further, after having seen Rudy Giuliani running scared Sunday morning on three different networks.

Surely Obama's detractors can do better than to be fronted by the likes of Rudy Giuliani.

The decision to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged conspirators in a Manhattan civilian court is "a pre-9/11 approach," according to the well-marketed hero of 9/11. Giuliani told Fox News yesterday: "The choice of New York is a better choice for the terrorists." He told CNN: "It's an unnecessary advantage to give to the terrorists. I don't know why you want to give terrorists advantages."

Giuliani's attacks on Obama were fascinating...given the fact that, back when George W. Bush was president, he had no problem with prosecuting terrorists in federal court. In fact, three years ago, when 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was successfully prosecuted as a civilian in a federal court in Virginia, Giuliani essentially vetted the proceedings by showing up to testify. And then he had this to say:

»  More Running scared

Earlier this week, Senator Jim DeMint and several GOP colleagues unveiled a bill that would require all federal lawmakers to give up their jobs after serving a fixed number of years. This would be a constitutional amendment. Senators would max out at 18 years (three terms); and House members would max out at six years (also three terms). In other words, term limits.

Good luck with that one.

When you cover politics long enough (that would be me), it's amazing how often all the old stuff gets re-branded as something new. When I heard the news about DeMint's bill, I was instantly transported back to 1990, when term limit talk was all the rage in Republican circles. GOP strategists kept telling me how important it was to take America back to the concept of "citizen legislators." They argued that all congressmen should be required to cough up their seats (and their perks) after only a few terms, because, as one strategist told me, by that point "any congressman is no longer committed to any interest except his own."

I kept insisting that they were hot for term limits only because they had been out of power in the House since 1955; that their real aim was to slap term limits on Democrats in order to compel them to retire - thus creating open seats and hiking the odds of Republicans taking back the chamber. And they kept telling me: oh no, that's not it, this is really a matter of principle, this should apply to all members regardless of party.

»  More Power and promises

Next week, when Sarah Palin begins the extended public blitz about her book (13 stops, 11 of them in presidential battleground states), there will be plenty of time to wonder whether the Republican party truly wants or intends to trust its destiny to a former half-term governor whose half-baked assertions are so often at variance with factual reality. But why wait?

While conversing the other day with a Wisconsin anti-abortion group, Palin embarked on a ramble about all the "change" being wrought by the Obama administration, and she cited, as evidence, a decision to tweak the design of the one-dollar coin in a way that discriminated against God.

She and a friend of hers had been lamenting the fact that the phrase "In God We Trust" had been moved from the face of the coin to the rim. She was appalled by this sacrilegious move, wondering: "Who calls a shot like that? Who makes a decision like that? It's a disturbing trend." Clearly, her message was that Obama and the secular liberals, in furtherance of their "trend," had banished God to the periphery.

This is yet another example why so many Democrats dream at night of a Palin nomination in 2012:

»  More Without a clue, again

This was the key passage yesterday in President Obama's Fort Hood eulogy: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know - no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next."

Finally, after days and days of political correctness in high places and in the press, we got an acknowledgement, from the president himself, that the alleged killer was driven to his misdeeds not because he was mentally batty or because he was lonely and troubled or because he was stressed by the issue of overdeployment, but because he was an Islamic jihadist.

Obama didn't specifically say that, of course - he obviously wanted to keep the focus on the terrorism victims, and avoid saying anything that might compromise the federal probe - but his line about "faith" clearly refers to Maj. Nidal Hasan's misbelief that he was acting as a true Muslim. Although Obama could have been more explicit in his condemnation (more on that below), he at least signaled that PC Americans should now dispense with the ritual pussyfooting and call out Hasan for what he really is.

Ever since the shootings, too many smart people have preferred to ignore the mountain of evidence about Hasan's true motives, because (a) they don't want to be viewed as "anti-Muslim" or intolerant of religious freedom, (b) they don't want to say anything that might help trigger a backlash against the Muslim-American community, and/or (c) they don't want to believe that we have, living in our midst and even within the military, religious extremists who want to murder us. To cite just one example, respected New Republic thinker and author John Judis was still insisting yesterday that "we don't know yet what motivated Nidal Hasan...I am reluctant to call him a terrorist, particularly because doing so arouses fears of a jihadist conspiracy in our midst that may not exist."

»  More The pitfalls of political correctness

Chekhov, the legendary 19th-century Russian dramatist, liked to articulate his rule for creating suspense. He reputedly decreed: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." Actually, some scholars think the quote was slightly different: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Either way, the latest flap about abortion is positively Chekhovian.

All through the spring and summer, as Congress debated and negotiated health care reform, the abortion issue has been sitting out there, like a loaded weapon perched in the corner of the stage, creating suspense by its sheer presence, and, in accordance with Chekhov's rule, it was only a matter of time before somebody picked it up and fired. And blew a big hole in the Democrats' reform package, requiring major surgery.

What happened in the House on Saturday night (the passage of a restrictive anti-abortion provision, as the necessary price for securing support from anti-abortion Democrats for the overall reform package), and what may well happen next in the Senate (anti-abortion Democrats insisting that the Senate adopt the same provision, as the price for securing their support on reform) is actually a symptom of the Democratic party's recent electoral achievements. It's quite perverse, really. The Democrats have succeeded so well at crafting an ideologically diverse majority that now this same diversity might imperil the entire health reform effort.

»  More The rifle on the stage

We can't know, at this point in time, what the Senate will ultimately decide about health care reform; to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, the Democrats have promises to keep but miles to go before they sleep. All we can say for sure is that there will be much tossing and turning between now and year's end.

But thanks to the House action on Saturday night - when, for the first time ever, a congressional chamber decided to give Americans the same kinds of health care guarantees that are common everywhere else in the advanced western world - we finally have some actual voting stats that can be viewed through a political filter.

So let's do it, because there's a good story about the No-voting Democrats...and why their votes won't protect them from Republican attack in 2010. In the political game, it's tough to get attack insurance; in this episode, they've been denied coverage.

Since the House Republicans were virtually united in doing what they do best - saying No, doing squat about health reform - the prospects for passage hinged on the decisions of the 49 Democratic lawmakers whose constituents are generally loyal to the GOP. Those 49 Democrats represent congressional districts that supported John McCain in 2008. On the eve of the Saturday health care vote, not surprisingly, those Democrats got a pep talk from President Obama.

»  More Denial of coverage

It's hard to overstate the importance of the impending House floor vote on health care reform, now scheduled for Saturday night. The moment of truth is finally at hand. For the ruling Democrats, this is akin to a standing at home plate in the late innings of a crucial World Series game; either they put the barrel of the bat on the ball, or they might as well hit the showers. If they somehow suffer more than 40 rank-and-file defections and the reform bill goes down (seemingly unlikely), the whole timetable for bringing a final measure to President Obama by the close of '09 will be upended. And then we're into an election year; fence-sitting politicians are congenitally averse to taking any legislative risks in an election year. So it's probably now or never for the Democratic leaders to figure out how to tweak the reform package in ways that will make it liberal enough for their liberal lawmakers and conservative enough for their Blue Dog and moderate lawmakers. Such is the prime challenge of a big-tent party. No doubt the Republicans would prefer to be running things, rather than naysaying from the sidelines; on other hand, because they are more ideologically homogeneous, they don't have the headaches that come with trying to herd various breeds of cats.

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Speaking of the House Republicans, they unveiled their own health care reform proposal the other day. Finally. It's a meaningless gesture, given the fact that they held power for eight years while one of their own party brethren sat in the White House, yet never showed the slightest interest in the issue. And sure enough, the new GOP proposal is a veritable blueprint for the status quo. The Congressional Budget Office has already checked it out: "By 2019, (we) estimate, the number of non-elderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million non-elderly residents uninsured." The GOP proposal wouldn't even prohibit the insurance companies from denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing health conditions. No wonder Americans continue to trust the Democrats far more than the Republicans on health care, even with all the public skepticism about the Obama agenda. Nor did the House Republicans help themselves yesterday, when they pandered to a crowd (bused to the Capitol by a corporate front group) that was heavily populated by the usual suspects yelling about Obama's Nazi/communist/Kenyan heritage. It was pathetic to watch Republican leader John Boehner bond with the loons by declaring that health care reform is "the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I've been in Washington." Well, gee. Until Boehner enlightened me, I had assumed that, in all those years, the crashing of a planeful of innocent Americans into the Pentagon had been the greatest assault on freedom. I stand corrected.

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»  More Friday quartet

Pressed for time today, I intend only to update a topic. This week, some readers got angry when I observed in my Sunday print column that Fox News "has fanned so many false rumors." How dare I suggest such a thing, they said. They challenged me to name even one example.

Most of these readers appear to hail from the great state of Montana (thank you, Billings Gazette), so perhaps there is something in the local water that makes them oblivious to the obvious. Their challenge was not exactly a brain-teaser, being roughly equivalent to the addition of two plus two.

There was the false rumor that President Obama was foreign-born, the false rumor that health reform would create "death panels," the false rumor that Obama would create internment camps run by FEMA, the false rumor that he is trying to conduct Mao-style indoctrination of schoolchildren, the false rumor that he was Muslim and/or perhaps a terrorist fellow traveler (remember the "terrorist fist jab?"), the false rumor that the symbol on the back of the dime was a fascist plot hatched by Democrats in 1916...that sort of thing.

And then, just yesterday, another false rumor surfaced.

Along the faux information pipeline (conservative blogs, websites, video aggregates, the usual) word quickly spread that Obama had refused to watch the Tuesday night election returns, preferring instead to switch on HBO and behold himself in the new HBO documentary depicting his '08 campaign.

»  More Anatomy of a falsity