Lowdown Lloyd Grove
Will Bill O'Reilly be a factor in the 2006 Senate race in New York State?
The Fox News Channel personality, host of the top-rated "O'Reilly Factor," occasionally gets mentioned as a possible Republican opponent to Sen. Hillary Clinton - and the speculation usually goes no further.
But I'm told that in recent days, O'Reilly, a registered independent, has confided to friends that he's seriously considering a run.
In one conversation over the past two weeks, I hear that O'Reilly even ruminated about whether he should endorse Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry - the better to position himself as a moderate Republican in a majority-Democrat state.
But a few days later, I'm told, O'Reilly rejected the idea of a Kerry endorsement, privately declaring his intention to back President Bush.
Still, he's been the target of criticism from red-meat Republicans who find him too soft on Kerry. Human Uzi Ann Coulter recently scorched O'Reilly in her syndicated column for being skeptical of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Here's how Coulter described "the O'Reilly method" regarding Kerry's Swift boat antagonists:
"To abandon independent thinking and simply come out in the middle, irrespective of where the two sides are. ... In Nazi Germany, O'Reilly would have condemned both Hitler's death camps and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising."
In response O'Reilly scoffed: "That's ridiculous."
Alas, this time the quotable TV star was unavailable for comment, a Fox News spokesman told me.