Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

It looks as though little Rick Santorum is going after the college Republican vote.

“And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what’s at stake. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country. What I’m asking all of you tonight is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker. Is it that much to ask? Is it that much to ask to step up and serve your country?”

No comment needed.

Via Jane

There is no center. Don’t get me wrong, just about everybody in America is somewhere far from politically extreme, but if George Bush has proven anything beyond his own ineptitude, he has proven that any attempt to appeal to the fleeting whims of the alleged centrist swing vote is about as worthless as attempting to sprout wings. Even worse than that, it’s as worthless as courting the youth vote. The youth vote like their parents and the center votes their party registration. Most of them don’t even bother to show up at the polls on election day. Whether you love it or hate it (and I do hate it), please do get over it and get a hold of reality. The reality of 2006, and many of the years that preceded it, is that any attempt to appeal to the alleged swing vote at the expense of the political base is doomed from inception.

Over the last several decades, both of our major political parties have positioned themselves further and further to the right. One has done so in an effective effort to mobilize its base, while the other has done so in a futile effort to appeal to the center - a center that votes its registration. Let’s look at the results. Actually, screw it. I think we all know the score.

I attended a candidate’s forum, featuring Alan Sandals and Chuck Pennacchio, last Saturday. At noon on a Saturday in January, that event was very well attended by the very Pennsylvanians that any Democrat will desperately in their camp if they plan to beat Rick Santorum this November. This isn’t about the few hundred votes in the room, though they are important. I am talking about enthusiasts and civic activists who show up at candidate’s forums month out from any vote. These are the people who will go home and talk to their neighbors and leaflet their neighborhoods. These are the people who will staff phone banks and stuff letters. These are the people who will go door to door. These are the people whose civic spirit every candidate for public office needs. But will they bother to lift a finger for Bob Casey?

If they don’t, who will? Before we anoint, let’s think that one over a little.

Update: I probably should have thought this post over a little before I published it. Shit happens.

Albert , Liz and ACM have nice posts on the Neighborhood Networks - African American Coalition Candidate Forum with Chuck Pennacchio and Alan Sandals held on Saturday. I attended the first part of the event, but haven’t gotten around to writing anything and I don’t have much to add anyway. For now, I’ll just say that I walked away excited by what I heard and looking forward to the primary. It’s up to all of us to make sure that the right candidate is representing us in November.

It may well be a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but whenever I start focusing on Bob Casey, a paragraph from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 winds up in block quotes on this site. Here goes.

How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

Switch out the name Nixon for Santorum and that paragraph pretty much sums up the way a lot of Pennsylvania Democrats are feeling right now. In the case of this year’s Pennsylvania Senate race, the dull grey reality of real and moral defeat is even worse than the one Thompson described.

This should have been easy. This should have been fun. Instead, the powers that be within the Democratic Partly chose, without our input, a candidate who makes beating Rick Santorum very hard. Now it’s up to us to fix it. Regardless of the conventional wisdom, we do have a choice. Let’ make a good one.

Forget the sage advise offered by bloggers in California. Forget the sage advice from hacks who don’t get that the whole “Alabama in the middle” business insults a few million more people than it enlightens. Forget the idea that Bob Casey’s positions on a few dozen issues will enable him to pick up the votes of people who will never vote for a Democrat. Forget the idea that people who would love nothing better than to see Rick Santorum out of the U.S. senate, will hold their nose and vote for Bob Casey’s lesser evil. Forget the notion that Bob Casey can beat Rick Santorum. He can’t.

Here’s something Chuck Pennacchio (the candidate I support) wrote about winning Pennsylvania and losing it.

In 2000, the Democrats settled on moderate, anti-choice Ron Klink as their candidate to take on Santorum. This aligned very well with the (still-prevailing) conventional wisdom that the Democrats had to move to the center to win a statewide race in Pennsylvania. Ron Klink had slight success at gaining moderate voters in Central PA; however, this was more than offset by the large number of pro-choice voters who did not cast a vote (over half a million more votes were cast in the presidential election than in the Senatorial election), and just as importantly, did not involve themselves in the Klink campaign. Pro-choice women, a major organizational and financial cog of the Democratic party, sat out the race, and the Democrats allowed a radical right-winger to represent them in Washington.

I doubt it, but it is nice to see the New York Times Editorial Board making a good faith effort every now and again. God bless their hearts. Here’s a sentence I liked, but the rest is worth a look.

But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust.

In my effort to make up for my indiscriminant use of baby gorilla images, it seems I may have done irrevocable harm to Anita Job’s psyche. This is all just too much to bear. I try to avoid evil, but apparently it drips from my pores. In an effort no make up for past sins, I offer an unnamed panda cub.

You had to see this coming.

The Santorum Casey race: When people find out about candidate positions on key issues Casey plummets from a twelve point lead to a dead heat, with a non-significant two point lead.

Santorum loses when matched with any of the democratic candidates. Both of the self identified progressive democratic candidates draw higher percentages than Casey, with Pennacchio having the largest percentage of votes against Santorum, at a not quite significant 4.4 points higher than Casey. Casey, at non-significant levels, actually gets MORE votes from Republicans once they find out more about him and Santorum.

I beleive the muffled groan you just heard was the death of the “Casey is the only viable Democrat” idea dying a painful death. Let’s be sure to clean up the corpse because I’m sure it’s going to start to smell something awful. Via Albert.

So when I first saw this the other day, I asked a couple of my coworkers if they had ever played Zork. “Zork? Huh? What?” was the reply and I felt old. Anyway, this is really funny, but probably only if you wasted a small part of your life thinking about grue repellent. Towards that end, go ahead and download yourself a little Zork.

My wife has decided that posting the picture of the baby gorilla in the last entry constitutes cruel and unusual punishment on my part. She says that most people who see that picture will be overwhelmed with the desire to have a baby gorilla in their own lives.

That’s all well and good, but I would argue that the image of the baby gorilla was used for good rather than evil. Clearly, some disagree. Well fine, stop looking at that gorilla and start looking at this baby picture of Hua Mei.

Picture stolen from pandafix and Baby Panda.

The thing I really love about having a serious bout of Santorum Hatred™ is that Rick seems to go out of his way to make hating him easy and fun for the whole family. Thanks babe. Just today he even earned himself a new nickname. I’ll keep calling him “everybody’s favorite dog loving drama queen and total cream puff” but I think “Lying Freak” is a good addition. It’s short and concise and unlike “Lying Sack of Shit” you can use it at formal affairs and job interviews. The following paragraph from the Morning Call Online is just about all you need.

Santorum also said he had not seen Norquist ”in years.” But Norquist, who is also president of Americans for Tax Reform, spoke at a Santorum news conference in June in the Capitol in support of legislation to repeal a telephone excise tax.

It gets worse. It always does, doesn’t it? Just have a look at what Kevin Drum and Dayvoe and Brian have had to say today. While you’re reading, keep in mind that the powers that be within the Democratic party picked one of the very few human beings in the entire Commonweath of Pennslvania who probably can’t beat the lying freak this November. Feel better yet? Me either. Have a look at this little guy.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up little guy. Thanks.

Kos:

And no, his two primary challengers aren’t viable alternatives. PA Dems will have to do better than them if they want a serious challenger to Casey who can also win in November. Like it or not, Casey has the clearest path to victory of any Dem Senate challenger this cycle. And we need this seat to have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and subpoena power.

The thing I love best about this is that Markos, a guy with a huge readership and at least a little pull, is taking a shit on the only two Democrats in Pennsylvania who have the spine to run against Casey in the Democratic primary. This is after Rendell and the DSCC wiped the table clean and anointed Bob Casey as the next Democrat to have his ass handed to him by Santorum. The thing I love second best is when writes “Like it or not, Casey has the clearest path to victory of any Dem Senate challenger this cycle.” I can only assume this is Kos’ way of telling us that Democrats don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of picking up a single seat held by a Republican not planning on retirement this cycle. I have to say I was a little more optimistic, but then again, who the hell am I? Nothing like the hiss of the air out of a balloon.

Casey may be a wonderful guy, I have no clue and I really do feel a little bad for being so negative. That said, I do know that Casey is a shit candidate with even shitier positions. He may well win the Democratic primary, but that’s probably the last thing he’ll ever win as a candidate for public office. He’s dead to rights after that and I can’t say that I really care. That right there is the problem. I’m about as partisan a guy you will ever find, but I will not lift a finger for Casey. If you can’t get me, and Democrats like me, to tow the party line in a general election against Rick Santorum, it’s all over. Game. Set. Match. Not that it wouldn’t have been over anyway. Casey is self destructive on the stump. Clearly.

You know what I would love even more than watching Kos take a crap on the only two people with the spine to run in spite of the DSCC and Rendell suicide pact? I’d love it if Kos and John Aravosis and anyone else from far away with a national profile, would stay the fuck away from Pennsylvania politics. The Pennsylvania Democratic party is self destructive enough without you taking a shit on our candidates. The establishment is more than able to lose races it ought to win without the help of prominent national liberal bloggers. More than that, there are more than a few of us here who really do care and who really are trying to back good candidates with good positions who we think have a chance - even if that chance is small. We are trying to build a relevant Democratic party in Pennsylvania, and more importantly, a better commonwealth. Please stop fucking us over. Even if just for a few weeks or a few cycles, please stop. Thanks.

No surprise in that really. I admit it freely and without an ounce of shame. The real surprise is existence of a Pro-Santorum blog. Actually no, that’s a lie. That was inevitable. Every political consultant with a client, regardless of that client’s mental condition, is working on the same because the kids love this crap.

I’m sure the young Republicans working the brutal front lines of Santorum’s Styrofoam “netroots” effort will be well compensated. Likely not in cash as that would look awful. I would imagine, however, that running or writing for a Pro-Santorum blog gets an enterprising young Republican a solid shot at a spot in one of the better paying right wing think tanks. Bully for them. This is the Young Republican who founded the site. He seems like fairly bright kid. Too bad he was overcome with wingnuttery at such a young age, because he may have otherwise become a productive member of society. We lose many this way, so don’t start crying.

Anyway, I’m pleased the young Republicans who run the Santorum Blog, associated me with such fine sites as 2 Political Junkies, Lawyers Guns and Money, PSoTD (a site that really does deserve wider recognition), as well as a random diarist on Kos. I certainly don’t belong in such fine company.

Since the Pro-Santorum site made the fairly common mistake of linking to this site by titling it “RowHouse Logic” rather than “Rowhouse Logic,” I feel an unrelated topic coming on. Do you feel it too? I know you do.

The word “rowhouse” is just that. No need to break it up into two words or capitalize the “h” in house. A rowhouse is a style of house that exists in towns and cities in every one of the founding 13 states. In Philadelphia we call them rowhouses, though they do go by a number of different names in other locales, as well as real estate advertisements.

Call them what you will, but the concept is the same. A rowhouse block looks like a canyon of brick and just a little stone. Concrete, asphalt and assorted crap flow down the middle. Every 10 feet or so you will find a pair of short staircases (stoops), usually made of unpolished marble or stone, which lead to a pair of doors. The houses behind those doors will usually have two very tall front windows, with stone or wood sills and often a flower box on each. Rowhouses originally populated by the wealthy in the 19th century are often wide enough for three large front windows. A nice deal if you can get it.

Should a walking spelling, grammar and punctuation mistake such as myself really be pointing out the errors of others? No! Indeed, this is nothing if it is not madness. I am, however, writing about a blog whose sole purpose is to do well by Rick Santorum. That, in and of itself, frees me to be as pointless and freakish as I want to be. At the very least, I’m not going on and on about dogs - not that I’m announcing a personal moratorium or anything. Santorum Hatred is always a good thing.

Booman goes to town on Casey.

Rick Santorum is one of the most loathsome politicians in America. He is also the least popular Senator in America in his home state. He is vile terrible person. Defeating Santorum should not only be one of our greatest priorities this year, but working toward that goal should be a joy…it should be fun and exciting.

Bob Casey as an opponent ruins that chance. Pennacchio and Sandals are all that is standing in the way of a showdown between Casey and Santorum. Casey won’t even debate them.

Casey should drop out of the fucking race. All he is accomplishing with his anti-gay rights, anti-science, anti-choice candidacy is to piss off Democrats and Democratic activists.

We need to send a message to Chuck Schumer that we don’t want to ever see a candidate like Bob Casey recruited again. Schumer clears the field for Casey and then has the unmitigated gall to get indignant about abortion rights in the Alito hearings. Watching that display of gross hypocrisy literally turned my stomach. I had to eat a saltine cracker to absorb some of the bile that aroused in me. If I could of slapped Schumer through the television set, I would have.

Hyperlinks added by me.

That just about sums it up. Casey is an awful candidate and the idea that Casey is the guy to beat Santorum needs to die and die now. I can’t think of a Democrat who is less likely to beat Santorum. Just the other day I mentioned that the moment Casey opens his mouth that his rosy poll numbers will drop like a brick. He has proven track record of blowing huge leads. Guess what just happened. Yesterday was a perfect example of what an inept politician Casey is. Believe me it’s going to get worse before it ends in crushing defeat.

A little more Booman.

Bob Casey Jr. is a lousy candidate. He sucks. His personality has been described as “warm ziploc bag full of vasoline”.

I have to quibble with this a little because I think he was actually described as “a sandwich bag filled with lukewarm Vaseline and crushed Valium.” Either way is good though. I’m just happy to contribute a little to the discourse.

I was trying to get at this last night, but I don’t know that I articulated it very clearly. By announcing his support for Alito, Casey lost whatever little support he had left with the base. I’ve been looking through the comment sections of some blogs who have written on this and actually get comments. Not even a bit of support and people are really coming around to the idea that this guy is a sure loser. If Casey is the nominee, this mess is going to keep more than a few people home in November. Casey needed every single one of the people who were planning to hold their noses and vote for him. There are a lot fewer of those people today than there were last week. To be more blunt - he’s toast. Casey can’t win. Time to move on.

Have a look at Booman and Susie to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

It has to start somewhere, so why not here? Until I feel comfortable that my government is obeying the law, I will post the text of the Fourth Amendment as my last post of the night every night. I hope that it will serve as an annoying and nagging reminder to my few readers of what’s at stake. I hope that at least a few other bloggers will join me. Since this tiny protest is pretty hokey, I don’t expect much company. I do still hope for a little. We’ll see.

What a weird time we live in. Who would have thought that the Fourth Amendment would ever become controversial? Strange days indeed. Anyway, here we go (no commentary from me from here one out).

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Why Bob Casey would decide to break his moratorium on relevancy by supporting Alito’s confirmation is likely beyond the grasp what a reasonable human being can grapple with without the aid of strong hallucinogens. This is, I suppose, his best effort thus far to lose his campaign to become Pennsylvania’s junior senator. He’ll do worse. Trust me. Two days before the general election in November, I fully expect to see huge front page pictures of Casey bear hugging Dick Cheney atop a pile of human skulls. Casey is dying to lose.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Rick Santorum’s leading Democratic challenger, Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey, announced Tuesday that he endorses Judge Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

For weeks, Republicans have called Casey “Silent Bob” and pressed him to say whether he supports Alito’s confirmation. Casey and Alito have a family connection because Alito, who serves on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Philadelphia, sided with Casey’s father, the late Gov. Bob Casey, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The case challenged a state law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

“I do not agree with everything that Judge Samuel Alito has done or said - particularly many of his rulings which too often result in corporate power prevailing over the interests of consumers and workers,” Casey said in a statement. “However, I agree with The Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post editorial boards that the arguments against Judge Alito do not rise to the level that would require a vote denying him a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Santorum’s campaign manager responded with a statement accusing Casey of ducking the issue and then following the lead of Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican. Both candidates are generally against abortion. Santorum came out strong in support of Alito at a conservative rally Jan. 8.

I can only assume that the Casey Campaign’s strategy for losing to Santorum is to mirror Santorum’s positions, but present a candidate without Santorum’s charisma (that’s not a joke - he has it). Is Casey really this desperate to ruin his political career? How many Pennsylvanians who might have been willing to hold their nose and pull the lever for Casey in November in order to bring down Santorum, just gave up? Not just a few. He’ll do more of the same over the coming months and more and more of us will give up. If Pennsylvania is going to have a Republican senator, why not have a freak show like Santorum who at least provides a giggle from time to time, rather than a giant hunk of Valium like Casey? Whatever.

Let me get a little more serious for a second. I haven’t made a stink about Alito personally because I haven’t had the time, due to personal circumstance, to really look into all of the relevant issues. When I post about an issue, a candidate or a nominee I do so when I feel I have a decent grasp of the issues involved. I have not come out either way on Alito because what I have to say doesn’t matter a bit and I’m not in an intellectual position to make an argument one way or the other. I have been disturbed by what I have read so far. The nominee appears willing to apply more leniency to the executive than I’m comfortable with.

There is no particular reason for Casey to come out one way or another on Alito’s nomination. It accomplishes nothing positive. It makes his campaign just a little more unpalatable than it already was to the active Democratic base he will very much need if he is to beat Santorum in November. Furthermore, it’s a stab in the back to the majority of Senate Democrats who seem nearly set (they still need some milk) to raise just a little hell over this nominee. Now they face the potential of having to answer hostile and unneeded questions about their potential colleague’s stance on this matter. Thanks Bob.

Whatever. This is why I support real Democrats who aren’t begging to lose.

(Via Albert)

I was trying to figure out what the hell this was all about since the link is dead. Fortunately it was easy as it’s right in the column.

But McClellan’s continued attempt to portray the Abramoff scandal as bipartisan doesn’t exactly help his credibility on the question of White House meetings. His assertion flies in the face of the facts and is a Republican talking point espoused only by the most partisan or most credulous.

I wonder who Mr. Froomkin might have had in mind when he wrote that?

Well, maybe only a little. The next time something tells me it “failed to open stream” I’m going to get pissed. Not as pissed as when some bastard steals my name to write about golf, but almost.

Just in case you missed this on the 400,000 other blogs posting on it last evening and this morning, I’d like you to have a look at this.

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the –

GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable –

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says –

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard –

GEN. HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, “We reasonably believe.” And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say “we reasonably believe”; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, “we have probable cause.”

And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.

General Hayden is the former head of the National Security Agency. That was an exerpt from an appearence he made in front of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C in defense of President Bush’s domestic spying program. Just in case you don’t recall the text of the fourth ammendment to the consitution, here it is.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

As a side note, something that really disturbed me when I was searching Google News for context on this post, is that the very first link Google offered was to an extraordinarily misguided post by John Hinderaker on Powerline. He describes Hayden’s presentation as “brilliant and heartfelt.” In reality I’m being overly kind when I describe his post as misguided. Given the history of that site and its blind adoration for the powers that be, I assume the very worst. The cult of Bush must surely be one of the most corrosive forces our nation has seen in some time. To staunchly defend what appear to be the highly illegal actions of the executive branch, using the feeble arguments of a spokesperson who is clearly uncomfortable with a text he should have learned in middle school, is unforgivable and repugnant. Especially for a lawyer. Unabashedly and proudly ignorant from start to finish. Not that I expected any better. Whatever.

It was stupid of me to even bother with that last paragraph. I should know better than to care about what shows up as the top story on a search engine’s news site. I should know better than to care what is written by fools. I’m burning up inside though. I want my country back and these fools are holding onto the keys.

Football Hall of Fame member and former Pittsburgh Steelers’ great, Lynn Swann leads Ed Rendell in a theoretical November match up for Pennsylvania’s governor by 45% to 43% (via PoliticsPA). Swann, who just recently declared, would will still need to win the Republican nomination for the privilege of facing Governor Rendell in a general election where Southeast Pennsylvania has not yet seceded from the Commonwealth and joined the great state of New Jersey.

Swann would be a savvy choice for Pennsylvania’s Republican party. As Terry Bradshaw’s most skilled receiver, he is a legend in Western Pennsylvania and the owner of four Super Bowl rings. Diminish the importance professional sports all you want, but playing a huge role in one of the greatest teams in all of football history does mean something more than maybe it ought to in the minds of a lot of voters. When that player and that team come from a city and a region that are often perceived as footnotes in the American story, those four rings start to mean a little more than just a little bit. We’re talking about a guy who spent 12 years in the spotlight, where every drop was a tragedy and every catch in the end zone was greeted with elation. He may wind up being an awful candidate, but his heroics with the great Steelers teams of the 1970’s allow Swan one minute of attention to articulate his positions. That’s the sort of thing most politicians can only dream of. Sixty seconds - that’s huge.

I won’t even bother to mention that polls conducted this far out are mostly meaningless and are produced to provide the polling companies who conduct them with a little extra exposure and an opportunity to press their brand name a little further into the minds of those few consumers who are paying attention. Oops. That was a mention wasn’t it? Do you forgive me?

Even with a 2 percentile deficit in opinion polling to a potential rival, I’m really not all that concerned about Governor Rendell chances in November. I have sneaking suspicion that he has some political skill.

Does anybody else remember that just about four years ago Rendell was running a solid 120% behind Bob Casey for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Armed with those impressive numbers Bob Casey made the ultimate mistake of opening his mouth. The man is human valium on the stump. The second he opens his mouth he loses 40 percentage points on the spot, losing an additional two percentage points for each additional minute his mouth stays open. Armed with that strange deficiency, he faced off against a gifted politician who is overwhelmingly popular in the commonwealth’s most populous region. Casey, of course, was toast.

There is something of interesting parallel happening this year. Casey is consistently running about 250% points ahead of little Rick Santorum. Say want you want about Rick Santorum, he is stupid and ugly and nobody likes him, but he is a talented politician who has inexplicably managed to have a political career in a moderate state while holding positions better suited to the feudal era. If Casey loses by less than 15% to Santorum, I’ll be shocked. You probably think me a loon.

Do you remember me saying that I would never unleash a torrent of bad analogies involving football and facial hair? Me either. Putting Casey up against Santorum is like entering a group of choir boys into a mustache growing competition against Jake Plummer. It’s like entering your grandmother into a neck beard contest with Koy Detmer. It’s like letting either one of the Manning brothers play a contact sport. It’s sheer madness and it’s just asking to lose. Why would we want to do that?