The speculation continues: Portman? Kasich?

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the long-suffering protagonist laments to his friend Horatio that his mother remarried so quickly after his father's death that the leftover "funeral bak'd meats" for his father's wake  were  served at his mother's wedding.  

Methinks there  is something Shakespearean  in the rush of speculation in the  wake of Mitt Romney's political death last week about what leftovers  will seek to succeed  him  four years hence. Alas, politics is forever impatient and doesn't provide for pauses or vacuums.

Amid all of the speculation, a case  in point arrived via the Columbus Dispatch that centered on an Ohio dream candidate featuring either leftover  Sen. Rob Portman or  Gov. John Kasich at the top of the heap.

Or as the Dispatch's Jack Torry wrote on Sunday:

"Less than one week after President Barack Obama defeated Mitt romney,  Kasich and Portman are being talked about as serious candidates in 2016.  If they run, they could provide that most prominent moment for Ohio politics since 1920, when Republican Warren. G. Harding of Marion defeated Democrat James Cox of Dayton for the  Presidency."

The article even quotes John Brabender, a senior advisor to  Rick Santorum's dead-end campaign (!),  as describing both guys as "certainly credible."  Some other Republicans gave pro-forma applause to both Ohioans.  That much alone could get the juice  flowing.  Are you ready for it, Iowa?

Oh, about Harding... He was dead-set against taxes, opposed America's entrance into the League of Nations and on other matters raised the generic Republican flag.   Some historians also suggested that his rise was clearly aided by the fact that he very much looked like a president.

Some familiar?  

Lost weekenders

PEGGY NOONAN,  author and conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal,  has this  defense mechanism to ease her idol George Bush through history.  Bush, she writes, protected America against terrorists.  Eh, sorry, Peggy.  I think you missed one....

WITH soaring unemployment, public debt,  and ugly international conflicts,  President-elect Obama may have to crash through a number of   brick walls to turn the country around.  His situation  reminds me of something that President Kennedy said when he described  his biggest surprise after he entered the Oval Office:   "When we got into office the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were."  

HEY, TAKE a breath!    A little more than a month since the presidential election, the pollsters are working overtime to give us a glimpse of where the next campaign will take us.  CNN says its poll of Republicans and Independents show Mike Huckabee leading the GOP  field with 34 pct. followed by Sarah Palin at 32 pct.  Since this is all gross  nonsense at this point, it would be interesting to see where these two "frontrunners" would wind up in the next poll if Warren Harding were added to the list. 

HOLIDAY SHOPPING, 2008.   I came across a plastic medalli0n that read "American Hero, U.S. Air Force."...Yep.  Made in China.  

BROWN(ie)S POINTS: The Sunday Plain Dealer excessively devoted most of its front page and acres of space inside the paper to the question: "What's Wrong with the Browns?" Obviously it was an attempt to lighten up the reader with some bright hometown news amid the really serious stuff eating at all of us these days.  I don't claim to be a deep thinker about that team by the lake, which qualifies  me as much as anybody else to analyze the Browns' annual sickly status.  It's called the Modell Curse.  Trust me.  Since Art moved the franchise from Cleveland, his Baltimore Ravens have won one Super Bowl, which  puts him one-up over the Browns.  By the way, the Browns lost against today.