“Democrats believe that because the bill’s title creates the impression that it is about providing health care to poor uninsured children that no one could dare to vote against it. Unfortunately for them, Arizona voters are smarter than that,” he said.

He went on from there, arguing that the measure has serious funding gaps.

News flash to DCCC decision makers: Shadegg’s not flipping his vote. His position on the measure is completely consistent with his conservative view of the world, which made Shadegg an extremely unlikely vote to flip in the first place. But they already knew that.

Seriously, if the DCCC suddenly had abandoned its mission of getting Democrats elected, and had reinvented itself as an insurance advocacy organization, the DCCC’s brain trust might have tried flipping Republican Rep. Trent Franks. After all, Franks’ northern Arizona district has a fair amount of similarity to Republican Rep. Rick Renzi’s northern Arizona district – and Renzi supports SCHIP legislation.

One obvious difference between Shadegg’s district and Franks’ district is that Shadegg has a well-funded Democratic challenger in Bob Lord. Franks doesn’t.

I told Thornell I doubted the DCCC’s deep thinkers truly were trying to flip Shadegg. I told him they obviously were trying to identify a wedge issue that Lord could use against Shadegg during the 2008 campaign. And, to their credit, SCHIP was a pretty good wedge issue.

Thornell espoused his deep personal pain that I would even suggest such a notion. He insisted the DCCC was running the ad in Phoenix strictly to educate Shadegg who was in Washington.

I said, “You can’t be serious. You don’t think you’re going to flip his vote. You’re targeting him because you want him out of office.”

Thornell replied, “Well, no. I mean – ”

I wasn’t buying it. I said, “Yes. Yes. Why would the DCCC try to convince Republicans to flip their vote? That doesn’t make sense. C’mon.”

Thornell replied, “Why would the DCCC try to convince? Because we believe, we actually believe in this issue.”

He never backed up. He insisted that the DCCC simply was trying to flip Shadegg, even if by doing so Shadegg became more appealing to Democratic voters, which would hurt Lord’s chances of unseating him.

Thornell said, “As far as your assertion that we’re trying to create a wedge issue, that’s not true at all. Partially what you said was right. We are trying to highlight a policy difference that Shadegg has on a priority that is a Democratic priority. And we are highlighting for voters in his district that he is currently, we believe, voting the wrong way on this. And he should be held accountable.”

The DCCC’s brain trust certainly should know about such things. For example, if they acknowledged trying to help Lord, they would be accountable for reporting the ad expenditure as an in-kind donation to Lord.

Shadegg represents Arizona’s 3^rd Congressional District, which takes in most of central and northern Phoenix, plus Paradise Valley, Cave Creek and Carefree.