Schmidt’s wizardry produced a 2008 presidential campaign that downplayed the differences between McCain and Barack Obama on social issues – including marriage. (McCain ran a somewhat different campaign with a dramatically different result this past month in Arizona. The result? The cause of traditional marriage prevailed in California by 600,000 votes. On the same day, on the same ballot, McCain lost California by 24 percentage points. Traditional marriage prevailed in Los Angeles County. McCain was buried there, following Schmidt’s advice. Some wizard. Some cachet…

The counsel of men like Mehlman and Schmidt is politically wrong — but with the elites it is oh-so-right. It is also why, very much unlike true conservatives, they are set on soliciting dollars for court cases where judicial elites can match the elite mindset. About election strategy, these counselors are just whisperers.

While this strategy may work for short-term rulings by brook-no-opposition judicial activists like Vaughn Walker, it will prove disastrous at the polls for the party out of office — if not in 2010, most certainly in 2012. Just ask Schmidt. He has experience.