Santorum: Middle class talk is basic Marxism.

Rick Santorum is on the stump. Or in the pulpit.

The experts say the former GOP senator, the lodestar of Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine and Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff in last year's presidential campaign, is firing his wisdom at audiences across the land for another go at the Oval Office.

But if we must bear the burden of Santorum's well-voiced piety,  how can we take him seriously? We can't. Or shouldn't.  This, after all, is the fellow who once condemned food stamps as the toxic source of all obesity.   And of late, he has been coming down hard on references to the "middle class". That's Marxist talk, he insists, by the "other side". Let him explain.

"Who does Barack Obama talk about all the time? The middle class," he spins off rhetorically to his audiences.  "Since when in America  do we have classes? Since when in America are people stuck in areas or defined places called a class. That's Marxism talk."

Not even Joe McCarthy came up with that notion. Still, for a wild-eyed dead-end politician,  the idea is in a class all by itself.

Inhofe: a gusher for the oil industry

OKLAHOMA is known for its oil wells, old-fashioned religion and obsolescent senators.  It apparently hasn't progressed much since I raced though the state many years ago en route to Chicago from a basic training base in Texas. S ince then, I don't think I've even flown over the Sooner State.  The absence of progressive political ideas may  explain why it keeps electing an old fool like Republican Jim Inhofe to the U.S. Senate.   It is a perfect match . 

Inhofe  became the  befuddled star of the national media  last week when he erupted into a hissy fit over President Obama's Cairo speech, accusing him of being "un-American" and leading Inhofe to wonder whose side the president was on.  We haven't heard  anything that silly  from Capitol Hill patriots  since the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the late Sen. Joe McCarthy.  

(Can you imagine somebody calling  Berlusconi un-Italian, or Sarkozy un-French? What, I ask, does it mean in English?)

Well, Inhofe gets away with his gibberish simply because he has the oil wells standing at his side.  He's received over a half-million dollars from energy sources and graciously responds by calling catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."  And who can ignore his comment in the moments after the Oklahoma City federal building bombing that there wouldn't be many casualties because at 9 a.m., all of the feds would off somewhere drinking coffee?  

This is the guy you should know a little more about when he is out there attacking the president's patriotism.