I can’t handle the thought, especially not with Crist momentarily in the lead in Florida. A victory for one will be all but unendurable, no matter how many seats the GOP picks up in the House. Victories for both? Stone-cold seppuku, my friends.

Wasn’t this moron supposed to be “all but finished”?

Survey results I obtained Tuesday, albeit conducted by a Democratic pollster and ones that go counter to previous public polls (but not some private ones), seem to indicate even without taking the GOP’s temperature that the fever is raging here, too. Lowden losing to Harry Reid for the first time by 5 percentage points (42-37). Danny Tarkanian doing better than Lowden, tied with Reid (37-37). Rory Reid within striking distance of Sandoval in the governor’s race (46-41).

Commenters in Headlines were dumping on me for being gullible enough to cite a poll (a Democratic poll, no less!) being touted by the Las Vegas Sun, especially when Reid himself is barely cracking 40 percent. The thing is, there’s reason to believe that Lowden really has collapsed. Part of the reason we already know, but Dave Weigel fills in the rest of the blanks:

On April 15th, the Tea Party Express brought Sharron Angle, a candidate for the Nevada GOP’s nomination to run against Sen. Harry Reid (D), to its pre-rally news conference. Angle accepted the group’s endorsement in person. The media didn’t much notice. As far as anyone knew, Angle was a frequent candidate — after leaving the state assembly she’d lost bids for state senate and the U.S. Congress — about to be shellacked again.

These days, the polls are telling us another story. Mason-Dixon had Angle at 5 percent before the Tea Party Express event. One month later, her support has quintupled to 25 percent. Sue Lowden, the former state GOP chairwoman and the first candidate on the airwaves, fell from 41 to 30 percent. Danny Tarkanian, a businessman and former basketball player, stalled out at 22 percent. Nevada Republicans now have a 3-way race.

Simply put, after the flameout of Debra Medina in Texas and the struggles of Chuck DeVore in California, it looks like the tea-party candidate is for real this time. She’s been around Nevada politics for awhile too, and with endorsements from people like Mark Levin (and, er, Joe the Plumber), she doesn’t have the same inexperience/name recognition problems that most TP upstarts have had. Given her surge into contention and the grassroots frustration with DeVore’s polling, I wonder if Angle’s about to replace Chuck D. as the righty blogosphere’s new fave. With Dingy Harry stuck at 40 percent and Rubio facing an unpredictable race in Florida, she could wind up being the true tea-party success story in November. Time to take a closer look.