Perhaps you remember the classic scene in “The Naked Gun” when Leslie Nielsen’s wonderfully idiotic police Lt. Frank Drebin stands in front of a fireworks factory that’s just exploded waving his arms and telling the jaw-dropped crowd to “disperse, there’s nothing to see here” while the Fourth of July erupts behind him.

Republican spin doctors began Drebinizing themselves on Tuesday night in response to the results of the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny tweeted: “Republicans at the White House are pleased tonight with the narrow margin of PA-18. ‘This isn’t a blowout — for now, we’ll happily take it,’ GOP official says.”

Rachael Bade of Politico: “Top House GOP source tells me that ‘we were predicted to lose by 4-6 points as of this a.m. So while this definitely isn’t ideal, tonight has already exceeded expectation with this candidate.’ ”

Then Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told Bade, “This was a one-off.” Since 2017, he said, in special elections for the House, “We’ve won five; they’ve won one. I’m feeling pretty good.”

If Collins actually is feeling pretty good, I’ll have what he’s having.

Republicans won those five specials, but the average swing in the vote totals toward the Democratic candidates in those races was an astonishing 14 percentage points.

The House record may stand at 5-to-1 for Republicans, but across the country, in special elections at all levels since 2016, the hard fact is that Democrats have won 40 races and Republicans have won five.

Mitt Romney won Pennsylvania’s 18th by 17 points in 2012. Donald Trump won it by nearly 20. On Tuesday, Democrat Conor Lamb prevailed by a few hundred votes. That’s a 20-point swing.

The Drebinizers are waving their arms wildly at us to try and make us look away from the fireworks factory explosion, but you really have to be blind and deaf not to see the obvious here.

They say Lamb was a really good candidate and the Republican, Rick Saccone, was a lousy one. Maybe, but candidate quality can’t account for a 20-point swing in a rock-ribbed Republican district. And anyway, Saccone may not have been inspiring but he wasn’t a credibly accused child molester or anything. He was a conventional Republican who tried to hug Donald Trump as close to himself as possible. He would have won this race at any other time.

Lamb ran as a relatively moderate Democrat — indeed, to hear the Drebins tell it, he was almost a Republican. But that’s just another way of saying he was a good candidate in a rock-ribbed GOP district. He tailored his views to the extent he could to the district in which he ran.

We’ve been here before, back in 2006 when Democrats won 31 House seats and took back the majority in the House. They ran candidates to the right of the party’s liberal consensus, and they did what they could to echo the district’s values. That’s sensible politics. And they don’t need 31 seats to take the House this year. They only need 24.

OK: The party’s de Blasio/Warren wing may do their damnedest to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory, with an ear to Hillary Clinton’s “wives do what their husbands tell them to” excuses and a demented faith that the way to win is to go hard-left. And if Democratic primary voters choose vegan pacifists as their candidates in districts with military bases and slaughterhouses, they’ll lose.

But they won’t. Most Democrats can taste victory, and they’re not going to blow themselves up.

The other telling spin (by Paul Ryan, of all people) is that Donald Trump’s presence in the race nearly won the district for Saccone. OK, so maybe Trump came and held a gonzo rally four days before Election Night and helped make it razor-thin. But that means without him there, the swing to the Democrat would’ve been 25 or 30 points!

And the primary reason these overall vote totals are going so heavily in the favor of the Democrats is . . . Trump.

The president may have gotten some Republicans to the polls, but he is depressing Republican enthusiasm overall and creating a counter-movement among Democrats who will drag themselves over broken glass to cast any vote that might be seen as a vote against him.

The GOP is the fireworks factory. It’s blowing up.

Maybe the explosion can be contained. Maybe the fire can be put out. But that’s not how a rational person would bet right now. Don’t be Frank Drebin.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com