Each of the two major political parties in the US actually consists of two factions that don’t always have the same goals: the presidential party and the congressional party. This point is underscored by today’s New York Times Web column by Carl Hulse (“Giuliani Seen as Sporting Strongest Coattails“). The reasoning here is that a Giuliani nomination would help the GOP reverse, or at least halt, the party’s sharp decline in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest, where voters are generally not as conservative as they are in the party’s Southern base:

“There is no question that he helps us in New England and Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt,” said one senior Congressional Republican who did not want to be identified since he has to work with all the Republican contenders as well as the eventual nominee.

That official and others say Mr. Giuliani is a much easier sell than some of his rivals in states like Connecticut, where Republicans lost two House seats in 2006, and New Jersey, where Democrats have ideas about ousting a Republican incumbent or two.

What’s interesting is that that off-the-record source does not go so far as to say that Giuliani would carry Connecticut and New Jersey against a Democrat, and recent polls suggest that he would have a tough time pulling such “blue” states away from Hillary Clinton. I could see a scenario in which Giuliani does help the Republican brand enough to save some congressional candidates in more culturally liberal areas but still loses the presidential race. Without George W. Bush as a punching bag, it’s conceivable that the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives even as they take back the White House.

If that happens, we might end up with a second President Clinton practicing “triangulation,” or pursuing a middle ground between Democratic activists on the left and a Republican-controlled House on the right. That worked out pretty well for the first President Clinton, so maybe Hillary doesn’t view this prospect with much horror. She is, after all, trying to jump from the Democratic Congressional Party to the Democratic Presidential Party.