Grumpy's political tour guide for Ohio primary

As the less-than Fab Four descends on Ohio's battleground, Grumpy is pleased to offer, free of charge, a unique candidate by candidate guide to their campaigns leading to next Tuesday's primary. Clip and save:

McMitt Romney: In visit to University of Akron campus, he assures UA President Luis Proenza that he loves polymers and has collected them since he was three years old. "My father was a rubberworker and always filled my Christmas stockings with them when I was growing up in Barberton".... As his campaign bus rumbles over Akron's All America Bridge, Romney tells reporters that he loves bridges. "They are the right height. Ann has four in our backyard, actually"...Visiting Goodyear headquarters, he lauds executives for their company's first annual profit in three years, but laments that "Obama made it worse". Before leaving he assures them that he loves tires. "They mean that our dog caged on the roof of my car doesn't bounce around when we go on vacation trips"...In Cleveland, wearing a "We love Art (Modell) tee-shirt" Romney praises LeBaron (sic) James, saying he doesn't know a lot about professional basketball, but does have several great friends who own teams. "Ann owns a couple of teams, actually"...

McRick Santorum: Skirting the University of Akron campus, he alerts the city's voters that the school's left-wing administration and committed socialist faculty are nothing more than propaganda mills and blames the atheistic President Obama for the Zips' football team's miserable record and the rampant use of contraceptives in classrooms... He repeats his earlier concerns that he was against hiring Jim Tressel by lifting him up with other people's money...At a rally in the Portage Country Club's parking lot, he thanks County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff for having the vision to invite him to the Lincoln Day Dinner and says he will keep Akron in mind when he chooses his cabinet...In Cleveland, Santorum exudes confidence that Bishop Lennon is doing the right thing by closing parish churches even though it is causing some Catholics to throw up.

McNewt Gingrich: Insisting that he is new Newt, who is full of cheer, Gingrich tells Goodyear's front office that he will land a blimp on a moon base in his second term...He says he is cheerful because he is campaigning in a state where the governor boasts of having a a "hot" wife...At Cleveland City Club, Gingrich brags that when he shut down the federal government, as House Speaker, he saved taxpayers $983 billion. He also promises that one minute after he is sworn in as president, he will issue an executive order banning lake effect blizzards from Cleveland to Buffalo. He also promises that the Browns will reach the playoffs late in his second term...He urges the Cleveland Board of Education to eliminate school janitors and replace them with 8-year-old dropouts to give the kids the kind of work experience they will need when they graduate from medical school someday...

McRon Paul: Showing up at the Unitarian Church, he calls Santorum a "fake"...Later at a campus rally, he calls Santorum a "fake"...And later at a rally in the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, he bashes the Federal government for spending taxpayer money on the park, saying there's no reason why the trees and wildlife can't get along nicely on their own... Before leaving Ohio, he holds a final news conference in which calls Santorum a "fake."

Alas, there are still six days before the primary.

The never-too-late DeWine conversion to Santorum.

AS OHIO ATTY. GEN. Mike DeWine tags along with Rick Santorum as his choice for the GOP nominee, shouldn't somebody remind him that McRick has some terrible off-the-wall ideas about what ails America? OK, Mike. I will.

For example, how do you think it will play on Ohio's higher education campuses that McRick passionately declared just yesterday that they exist solely to indoctrinate students with leftist propaganda? (Are the University of Akron and Kent State University listening?) As for public schools, your guy is just as nasty, arguing that they are a total failure in teaching our kids the sort of wholesome things they learn in home schooling.

I won't even go into his apocalyptic slandering of President Obama and his other hysterical trashing of anything that he believes is the work of Satan. Nothing less than you might expect from a fellow whose candidacy is described by his wife as God's Will. That's the inspiring term that drove Christians on 8 or 9 crusades and they ended up with the Muslims still in control of Jerusalem.

So Mike. while you were wasting so much of your office's time joining a group of six other AG's for a legal challenge to President Obama's compromise on birth control insurance, Santorum has risen to the top of the national charts not only against McMitt Romney but also as an object of gasping ridicule. Forgive me for debating whether you changed candidates at an opportune moment when the polls showed Santorum winning Ohio's primary. Or whether as a public official your well-known Catholic loyalty has led you to ignore those of other faiths.

So what's you game plan, Mike, now that you flip-flopped on Romney and became a Rickista?

A hopeless yearning to become attorney general in a Republican administration? You are chirping for a political dead-ender and I would think that a guy who has been at or near the political trough for so many years would know that by now. Maybe you should return my tax money that you have spent tilting windmills on the national scene while staying on the good side of a radical theocrat instead of tending to the business of ALL Ohioans. I'll be checking my mail.

Meantime, I would assume that all of the huzzahs by the front office of the Summit County Republicans who hosted Santorum last week would be a source of embarrassment to the local cheerleaders. A copy of the invitations for the Lincoln Day dinner, handed to me by a friend on the party's mailing list, lured the faithful with the usual hype of a newly celebrated Republican.

It described its guest speaker as having an "unmatched conservative [that] has built Rick Santorum's winning reputation as a fighter for an unapologetic America - a nation true to its founding values, with smaller government, less wasteful spending and a strong national defense." Even as political hyperbole, this one is a bit too much., don't you think?

Winning reputation? The last time Santorum was on the ballot in Pennsylvania as an incumbent senator, he lost by 18 points. It took a while, but the Keystoner voters caught on to him. Shouldn't Ohio's Republicans be forewarned?

Better hurry. The Ohio primary is arriving soon. Until then, we might want to call this nonsense a scandal of Biblical proportions.