GOP's Bob Bennett may be back in town

ALL OF THE talk that former Ohio Republican chairman Bob Bennett will return to that high office as the new Ohio Republican chairman can only bring remorse to Summit County GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff. Over the years, Arshinkoff, having once aspired to the state job himself, never had anything good to say about Bennett. And now that Gov. Kasich, who rules the GOP plantation these days, has succeeded in brutally dispatching the party's current chairman Kevin DeWine, Alex can expect no favors from the party's downstate headquarters. Or maybe at 73, Bennett will generously disregard past insults.

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The headline in today's Columbus Dispatch has this to say about the Republican whiz kid who is running for the U.S. senate against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown:

Mandel campaign endures 'rocky start'

And then some! So far, all we've learned about Josh Mandel, the 34-year-old Ohio treasurer, is that he's challenging Romney for empty talking points but an avalanche of campaign cash. Avalanche may be too cautious. Two major conservative Sugar Daddies, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are among the majors who have plowed more than $5 million into TV ads bashing Brown . And there is doubtless a lot more on the way.

Among Mandel's weirdest charges against Brown is that the senator, a longtime friend of labor, has been in the forefront of sending American jobs to China. When challenged on that easily refuted form of political idiocy, Mandel blithely says he has no reason to stop saying it and plans to utter it "again and again''. He also boasts that he is an ex-Marine with two terms in Iraq. Thank you. We can honor that. But I can also add that as an ex-Air Force officer myself, I would have made an awful senator. Frankly, the young man gives me a headache.

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Well, here come the birthers again. Two Republican congressmen are now expressing grave doubts that President Obama's birth certificate is authentic. So naming names, they are Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Says Hartzler, one of the people minding the Tea Party store: "I have doubts that it is really his birth certificate." Can you imagine how much more of this nonsense we'll be hearing into November by Republicans who want to lead this country into ...um...greatness?