That's the story this morning from The New York Times' Adam Nagourney, who leads off an otherwise newsless and self-evident article (Basic thesis: the parties are strategic utility maximizers. My reaction: Wow...what a scoop! We haven't known that for 20+ years!) with this explosive lead:

Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year's fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine's seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign's final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.

This is extremely surprising -- so surprising that I cannot help but wonder if there is more to the story than this. We'll take it for granted that DeWine is falling behind in their internal polls - though last week the Bliss Institute's poll found him with a slight lead. What I find hard to believe is that the GOP would believe that it is an acceptable strategy for holding the Senate to do the following:

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states -- Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia -- while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.

The GOP has decided that their best chance for holding the Senate is to focus on just three races? Ostensibly, they have already ceded 4 seats in all -- PA, MT, RI and now OH. That means they have to go at least 2 for 3 in these three contests. That sounds awfully risky to me.

What is more, one has to guess that the GOP knows that, ultimately, political advertising has a diminishing marginal return. One dollar does not yield a constant return of votes, thanks to the advertising "din" that is created in October. So how does pouring their vast fortunes into 3 races maximize the probability that they hold the Senate?

This article indicates that resources are going to be redirected from Ohio to Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia. That's a rational thing to do if and only if the marginal redirected dollar will do more to help the party in these other states than in Ohio. So - it is not simply enough for DeWine's chances to be falling on the wayside. It also requires that, given these falling chances, the marginal dollar is best spent in these other races rather than in the DeWine race. This implies that the party was not already going to spend everything it felt it should in these other states, which in turn implies that their resources are relatively scarce -- which is exactly the opposite of what we have been hearing from them for months. Giving up on a race that is still probably winnable - even if the chance of victory is now at 33%, for instance - is something that a party does when it is suffering from scarce resources. And that is not one of the many GOP problems this year.

And of course, this does not take into account the fact that The Washington Post on Friday reported that the GOP was making Ohio part of its Waterloo-type stand. On Friday -- the final stand was to be made in Ohio, Missouri and Tennessee. Today -- it is to be made in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia. Nagourney indicates that this is part of a "fluctuating" Republican strategy -- and he wasn't kidding!

Nor, for that matter, does it take into account the story last week from David Espo indicating that the NRC was involving itself in the Ohio Senate race, stepping on the toes of the NRSC in the process. Espo wrote:

In an unusual move, the Republican National Committee is investing heavily in television advertising in Senate races in Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri in what officials describe as a firewall strategy designed to limit Democratic gains in the Nov. 7 elections and maintain the GOP majority.

So - DeWine has gone from fire wall to down-in-flames in less than a week? It was so important to hold his seat that the RNC was stepping on the NRSC's toes -- and now they are pulling up stakes?

Nor for that matter does it take into account a subsequent paragraph in the article:

Republicans said they remained confident that the party's considerable financial advantage would allow them to hold back a Democratic onslaught over the next three weeks, and they said they were preparing to spend significantly to bulk up any Republican who their polling over the next few days suggested might be faltering.

How does this sort of strategic principle not cover the DeWine race? Did I not read just a few paragraphs up that DeWine is indeed faltering? Did DeWine insult Mehlman's tie or something last week?!

I think there is something more to the story -- and whatever that "more" is, it exists in the undetailed details implicit to this paragraph:

Mr. DeWine has proved to be a successful fund-raiser on his own, and, with $4.5 million on hand, already enjoys a large financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Representative Sherrod Brown; he is not dependent on financial support to keep campaigning. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee have already spent $4.6 million on his race; party officials said they concluded that there were now simply more opportune races to focus on.

Maybe, then, the Times is drawing the wrong inference from their sources. Maybe they are interpreting Republican accounting procedures (i.e. the party being satisfied with the overall amount spent between the RNC, the NRSC and DeWine) as news of DeWine's demise. This paragraph certainly reads differently from the opener, does it not? This one reads as though DeWine is in fairly good financial shape, and the GOP is moving on to less well-heeled candidates. That certainly makes more sense.

Minimally, there seems to me to be a tension between different paragraphs of this story. And it is obvious that there are tensions between this story and the news from last week. Unfortunately, the agents who could clear it up for us, the national Republican organizations, will not do it because:

Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, "The committee doesn't discuss internal strategy in terms of where financial resources are allocated."

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