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Very few of the 20 things noted above will be working against her fifteen short months from now. I especially cannot imagine that Jean Schmidt will allow herself to make the same campaigning mistakes twice. Of course, there is something in the way before November 2006 comes along. I'll cover that and a few other matters in another post.

I agree with you for the most part. Bob Novak was on C-SPAN yesterday at a Q&A session in D.C. and an Ohioan asked about that race. Novak did say that Schmidt was not a good candidate and ran a poor campaign.
I thought there were three big things.
One was COAST (and to a lesser extent the other primary opponents) not going to bat for Schmidt in the general. I thought that hurt her. I don't know to what extent Brinkman was or was not involved in it, but by being affiliated with the group in the past, I suspect a good number of Republicans are not happy with him.
Second, the state of the Ohio GOP hurt Schmidt. I wonder what would have happened if Hackett had not talked about the war stuff and just focused on Taft, Householder, etc.
Third, I think this race should teach anyone a lesson. Even in a solid district like that, you can't underestimate your competition. I think some people thought it was in the bag after the primary. It was a mistake. Fortunately, Schmidt won. It's something for Republicans to learn from.

I'm afraid the same issues that dogged Schmidt now will still be around in 2006, if not even more magnified. The Taft/Householder scandals have hardly hit their peak. I think voters will be more angry with Taft in 2006 than they are now, as more about his scandals comes to light.

Householder and his team will be indicted before then. This will hurt Schmidt more than the Taft scandals. She's extremely close to Team Householder. I heard she's even the godmother to Brett Buerek's child. (Brett is a prime target of federal corruption probe.) When these two guys get indicted, Schmidt will have an even bigger target painted on her than she does now.

We need to take out Schmidt in the 2006 primary so that Hackett can't ride the Taft/Householder corruption to the final 4% of the vote he needs. Just replace her with *any* clean, anti-tax conservative. I don't care if it's a "name" like Tom Brinkman or a no-name like Jeff Morgan or Steve Austin. Clean conservative = Republican hold.

Nominate Schmidt again, and we just might blow that final 4%. And if she doesn't blow it, we're stuck with a compulsive taxaholic anyways. I don't want either of these tax-hiking crooks as my congressman. Just give us a clean conservative.