Portman says he would tag along with Trump

Ohio's tag-along Republican Sen. Rob  Portman says he fully intends to support Donald  Trump if the demonizing carnival barker is  the nominee.

If so, I have a vision of him in workaday apparel tagging along at Trump's side across Ohio, just as the senator did in 2012 with Mitt Romney.  Who knows in this crazy crowd whether Portman might be thinking veep, although you have to wonder whether Trump would want anybody so meek and mild sharing the center ring with him.  

But you must also wonder why Portman committed himself so early to any choice.

He's  facing a tough challenge  from ex-Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2016 Senate race even though the Koch Brothers have claimed the senator's  obedience to their causes by chipping in $1.4 million for an early media blitz.

It's  Ohio, I know, a swing state,  if not  swinging state, where  GOP candidates take no chances in the Big Picture.

 Remember that Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine jumped ship on Romney in 2012 in mid-campaign and endorsed Rick Santorum.  The AG decided Rick was going to win, a thought that Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff probably shared with him while inviting Santorum to be the star of a big county Republican fundraiser.  The chairman even staged his poll of the feeders at the event and boasted that Santorum had virtually run the table.

P.S. As long as we've mentioned the Republican-style Summit fund-raisers, one even hosted Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the Ultra Conservative U.
S. House Freedom Caucus.  Keep in mind that Jordan is now threatening to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood. 

Debates: Mike DeWine,the people's lawyer who isn't there

Re-posted from Plunderbund 

Ever since Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine put on his reelection campaign game face, he's been drifting across the masses like a UFO with the best wishes of a forgiving  press  and a looming Republican year at  the polls.

Now you see him, now you don't.  He prefers to cast his attention to his other interests that gives him a Deep South spiritual coating as a social conservative - nay, as a blessed Medievalist opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage, defending  Hobby Lobby, opposing gun control  and above all, the Affordable Care Act.  On that point, he has long made his rounds outside the state to wherever he could pitch in to help defeat ObamaCare.

Of late, he has taken up the cause of restricting Ohio's new voter system, the one that a right-wing Supreme Court just delayed after two lower federal courts had ruled it unconstitutional. The Supremes would have overruled tfhe lower courts 5-4 anyway  if DeWine had gone fishing.  Or spent a little more time facing his opponent, David Pepper, a Cincinnati Democrat, in at least a debate or two.

Pepper put the debate issue in the right context when he spoke  at the Akron Press Club this week.    As a lawyer himself, Pepper gamely questioned DeWine's  rejection of any debate, including the invitation  from the Cleveland City Club. Some newspapers gently  questioned the UFO's decision, too, but for too many voters,  debates are best left to molecular physicists.

Pepper,  however,  squarely defined DeWine's posture as unbecoming of a guy who must serve  as the people's lawyer and be  never fearful of airing differences with opponents in courts or anywhere else.      "If you're afraid to debate as the attorney general,"  Pepper declared, "something must be  wrong."

Indeed,  it is.  And that should include the many reports of how DeWine has converted his office into a pay-to-play cash cow, hauling in campaign cash from those who stand to sweeten their own pots in return.   In one recent exposed case, DeWine replaced a company that had ably served several  different governors in debt collections, giving the lucrative contract to a pal of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, despite the recipient's admission that he had little experience in that line of work. (Over the years, Alex has smelled money like a shark  attracted to blood. He was once on DeWine's payroll as the AG's liaison in northern Ohio. )

Still there is strong feeling that Mike DeWine towers so high in ballot strength that he is unbeatable.  That hasn't always been true.  Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat,  no less,  thumped DeWine out of the. U.S. Senate in 2006 with room to spare. (56 pct. landslide.)   On that occasion DeWine had no more than an approval rating in the 30s, putting him just above Rick Santorum as the most unpopular  senator on Capitol Hill.

But DeWine has the ability to hover in politics.  In 2012 he was a Santorum supporter in the presidential.  He then startled the experts with a  mid-campaign switch to Mitt Romney when  it became increasingly clear that Ol' Rick wouldn't win the Ohio Republican  primary. Call his retreat from Santorum as a "course correction".

Four more years for this mercurial UFO?    You decide.

P.S. Pepper did speak to the Cleveland City Club luncheon this week, sans DeWine.

Be happy that the big carved Indian didn't go anywhere..

It's been a busy week of comings and goings around here.  Despite being groomed for the University of Akron  job, Jim Tressel  is headed to Youngstown State University,  and University of Toledo provost Scott Scarborough is coming to UA. Then, in case you strangely missed it, a young man roaringly celebrated  as Johnny Football, a.k.a, Manziel, was grabbed by the Browns to rise to the heights of a franchise quarterback beginning with pre-season ticket and T-shirt sales.

Virtually unnoticed in the area media has been the frenzied uprising by  GOP House members with certificates of excellence from the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts.  That may include at least half of the Republican  reps who want a seat on Speaker John Boehner's Select House (kangaroo) committee to damn well get to the bottom of Benghazi by the next presidential election.  There's probably no  group on Capitol Hill more qualified  to investigate the ad hoc scandal than this fishy gang of bottom feeders.

Also  going away were six more Beacon Journal staffers who accepted buyouts, including Jim Carney, Jewell Cardwell and Dave Scott. That reduced the size of the staff, reported the BJ Retirees blog,  to 30 pct. of what it was in 1991.

 And coming to Akron was Rick Santorum to sell his books and non-existent presidential credentials to an Ohio Christian Alliance lunch crowd.  But I think I already mentioned that earlier, didn't I?

Gone, too, for at least a year is Browns' star wide receiver Josh Gordon, who was suspended for drug violations.  The Browns couldn't even get through 24 hours of Manziel madness without a  cloudburst on their parade.  You have to wonder what they ever did to offend the gods.

That left the big carved Indian on West Market Street as the only  figure of interest in place.


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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.

Stop misnaming Republican Lincoln Day dinners

While viewing Steven Spielberg's compelling film, "Lincoln",  I couldn't avoid  thinking of the wide gulf between the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln's age and the impostors that have kidnapped the GOP of today. In the 1860s, Republicans were the good guys who supported their president's efforts to preserve the Union and free the slaves.  Lincoln had little hope that he would be reelected.   The Democrats were the bad guys clinging to slavery while engaged in a war of secession.

But in a dramatic reversal of roles,  the capture of the Republican Party by the Tea Partyers and their wealthy enablers has openly abused the Lincoln of wisdom, courage and patriotism (so sensitively  revealed by Daniel Day-Lewis).  There is still silly talk of secession within wacko groups.
And few will deny that racism kept Barack Obama's victory closer than it might have been.  For confirmation, simply check the figures of white-guy voters.

In February, or a little later,  Republicans will stage their traditional Lincoln Day Dinners, often showing preference for right-wing GOP speakers.   The trend by the Summit County GOP, for example,  has featured   such conservative icons  as Mike Huckabee (whom, it says in the invitation, is a "leading favorite to top"  the 2012 presidential ticket;  Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the party's very very conservative Study Committee;  and Rick Santorum, who needs no further introduction.  I have occasionally referred to these misnamed "Lincoln" events as identity  thefts.

 Although I don't expect happier results, may I suggest that now that they have lost the election, the  sponsors of these political stage shows find a new name for the dinners .  The  Norquist Day Dinner?  The LaPierre Day Dinner?  At least this would be a more honest approach and not slander Lincoln in his grave.

Santorum to Todd Akin: Go for it!

If quasi-priest Rick Santorum has any plans for self-sainthood, he's going about it in an odd way. Now that Rep. Todd Akin, the Missouri  Republican who made the term "legitimate rape" "a household term (as in House of Representatives) has decided to stay in the Senate race, Santorum apparently has no misgivings about vigorously  endorsing him.  Akin is trying to unseat Democratic U.S.Sen. Claire McCaskill, whom the  GOP right-wing would prefer to be back in the kitchen.   Santorum puts it this way:  If the Republicans hope to take back the Senate, they'll have to throw out McCaskill and any oddball Republican successor will do.     Machiavelli is alive and well in some political precincts.

Elegant language eludes Romney

   

                Mitt Romney said his words about  the 47 per centers were not stated elegantly
         
                                                                        * * *

Until now, we had usually assigned elegance to the words of Shakespeare or Robert Browning.  But  here comes Romney with his 47-47  paint-by-the-numbers  remarks to a thick-walleted group of donors  that assume one can speak elegantly while dissing  nearly half of  Americans as  lazy, whining, tax-free slobs. As one who has accused  President Obama of  "divisiveness,"  Mitt has now said, in his own goal-tending   words: "The president has his group and I have mine."

Mitt would have us believe that his  views on this drag on hardworking taxpayers (his 47 pct .plus the Big One at the top)  were a little muddled because he was speaking "off the cuff".

"I'm sure," he retreated, "I could have stated it with more clarity."

But I'm sure that not until the video blew a big hole in his campaign did he think his message to his high rollers was anything less than clear.

There have been strong hints about where the Romney campaign has been headed in nailing The Others in his great divide.   Rick Santorum, once a Romney opponent and now a surrogate, has recently declared that  the "elite and smart" people would never vote for his side.  Probably true about smart people, although I know little about the elitists. And it's now inelegantly clear that Mitt knows nothing about the 47 pct. who are The Others.

But Rick, surely you can use some of those people, too

While searching for today's unqualified winner of the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL)
Award, I figured it couldn't  get any better this one from Rick Santorum speaking at the Value Voters Summit:

"We will never have the media on our side.  We will never have the elite, smart people on our side."

Anybody have a problem with that?

In Santorum visit, the thrill is gone

The old house across Market Street from the Tangier Restaurant was still sprouting one of  those 1950s rooftop TV antennas.  A few paces away a low-slung building was separated from the world by closed venetian blinds.  Its lettered message above the door  told of the availability of pinballs, pool tables, juke boxes and other once-wildly-popular diversions, although it wasn't immediately clear that the place was still open for business.  To one side facing the street rose a large sign promoting the 65th annual Italian-American Festival, July 13-July 15,  This was Aug. 15.

The Tangier marquee bore a welcome by "Romney-Ryan, Oh., for Senator R. Santorum.'"  But like the scene across the street,  there was an equally strong sense of yesterday  as the small crowd awaited the arrival of their honored guest in a room just off the lobby.    It was on Feb. 19 that Santorum, the darling of the Buckeye Tea Party, drew 1,350 well-wishers to the Summit County  Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner.  His supporters shunned Mitt Romney by anticipating a big Santorum sweep in Ohio.  As Bryan C. Williams, a veteran factotum in the local GOP and Tea Party admirer, put it, the event would "kind of cement his front-runner status in Ohio."  Besides, Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine had astonished many of his party's brethren by abandoning Romney's ship to endorse the former Pennsylvania senator.

But as anyone who has aspired to political greatness knows, you must first win the front-runner election, which didn't come close to happening, even as Santorum barked that Mitt was the "worst Republican" his party could nominate.

He didn't repeat that harsh assessment at the Tangier muted pep session.  He was even less demonstrative as he peered out at a standing audience of no more than 75 (!) listeners that included at  least a dozen dutiful local candidates who are never more than a phone call away from one of these events, reporters and Obama's own monitors.   Explaining that county GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff would not be available (he was ailing), Williams worked to keep the program moving by introducing each local  with the party's trademark musical bump by a small  outfit that managed Stars and Stripes Forever with a guitar, electronic piano and drums, if you can imagine that.

Santorum revived his speeches from the primary season to a courteous group,  many wearing
Romney lapel stickers.   But he was less than connective as he assailed Obama as a lawbreaker, a warrior on religion  (got that, Catholics?) , and a divisive character who was in the game simply to collect votes.  "You have a right," he said, in his insistence on pulpiteering, "to live your faith out."  But his biggest applause line was his promise that the  Romney-Ryan campaign would go after the media. It's a standby promise, but it usually works with the right crowd.
''
On the whole he did seem less energized than the time he stood up  before the Lincoln Day dinner crowd.   But he had so many more listeners in February and considered himself the frontrunner.  Today he will merely be the supernumerary on the Romney-Ryan Comeback America Team.

Losers tend to draw much smaller crowds. And, likewise,  that Italian-American festival is history.




r

The Rev. Romney to the pulpit

 

A HALF-CENTURY AGO - Sept. 12, 1960 - Sen. John F. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Assn. to define his Catholic heritage  to a Protestant assembly wary of his candidacy for the presidency. He wanted to reassure the gathering that his first responsibility as the nation's leader would be to base his decisions on the national interest,  not as a religious advocate.   (This was the eloquent speech that Rick Santorum snarlingly said nearly forced him to "throw up.")

Speaking  honestly and without servility to one faith or another, Kennedy declared:

"I believe  in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish - where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy  from the Pope, the National Council of Churches  or any other ecclesiastical  source - where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials - and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all".

He later added: "Whatever issue may come before me as President - in birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject - I will make my decision in  accordance  with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.  And no power or threat of punishment  could cause me to decide otherwise."

Romney appeared before a group that doubtless included skeptics about his Mormon faith, which evangelicals consider a cult apart from Christianity. Unlike Kennedy, who defined himself as an unbound  leader in terms of a president's decisions,  Romney preached to the choir, casting himself as a heartfelt Christian, particularly on  same-sex marraige, abortion and other social issues.  He spoke of a relationship "with our maker".

"Whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and sick or mercy for  the chid waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action'', he said.

The New York Times described the event as Romney's "most extensive and direct discussion of religion since his 2007 speech about his own father."

In short, Romney, rather than declaring his independence from a  system of religious tenets,  let his listeners know the he was cut from the same cloth. In a pluralistic nation, he was rigidly one of them.  It defined the parameters of a theocratic  governing style, but hardly a profile in courage.

Down goes Santorum, leaving GOP with what?

Now that McRick Santorum has given up his solemn clerical quest for the presidency (while promising to keep fighting for the values that make us American!), we can turn to the genius of Hollywood casting: Willard Romney. Lean, board-room looks - fair skin and very good hair - possessor of a couple of hundred million dollars (not that much, really), a business resume corporate America could trust, robotically engaging, and a four-car elevator in the plans for fixing up his beach-front home in California, which even Bush didn't have. He now has the least encumbered hand to go after President Obama. We await, in his spokesman's words, the Etch a Sketched New Romney.

So far, what we have been told by the former Massachusetts governor is that Obama is a "failure", that as the economy inches up, Obama has made it worse, that there is no connection between his trademark RomneyCare as governor and ObamaCare, which can and will be easily shown as the offspring of...eh...RomneyCare.

Wall Street, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Republican establishment ganged up on the unfortunate Santorum while the Bush Supreme Court unplugged a sea of campaign money that was of no small assistance to Romney's contributors. Not that they were enthusiastically drawn to the GOP's presumptive nominee, but what palatable options did they have?

So here we go. Obama vs. Romney. Or Obama vs. Obama in the eyes of his delirious critics with Romney along for the ride? Delirious? Iowa's Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley just described the President as "stupid". And a federal judge in Montana didn't mind forwarding a joke suggesting Obama's mother had sex with a dog.

When Obama was elected, people around the world were impressed that American democracy had finally reached a new level of maturity in making a black man its leader. But at that very moment, Republicans set out to dash our historic progress, casting aside any thought of how they might help to clean up George W. Bush's mess. Instead, with monstrous intensity, they set out on a single goal, publicly declared, to destroy Obama's presidency without a moment's delay. Inasmuch as Obama had yet to sit at his new desk, their best weapon was to build an impervious wall against him on Capitol Hill while also driven by racial motives in an obvious return of Nixon's Southern Strategy. They simply found, as did this season's GOP candidates, various ways to encode them.

You got hints of it in Romney's assertion that he wasn't "concerned about the very poor" because they had a safety net (that they would make more porous along the way); or Santorum's word that he didn't want to help people with other people's money; or Newt Gingrich's cynical contention that Obama was the "food stamp president". It all was funneled into the Tea Party mentality and embellished by the birthers. What a mucky way to present yourself as the honorable wave of the future.

As Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them"... We won't know until Election day, whether Romney will manage to qualify for the third category.

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Romney: The risks for GOP's last man standing

NOW THAT EVERYBODY except McRick Santorum and possibly a few diehard members of the hyper-religious Family Research Council have eliminated him as a presidential contender, the posse galloping after Barack Obama has now been reduced to a single rider: McMitt Romney. He is, of course, told-you-so joyous about this, hyperventilating more each day as he goes about his business of trying to convince the voters that it's past time to return a Republican to the Oval Office. That's a particularly shaky notion since many folks - including Republicans who dare not mention the name - have tried to forget the last Republican who enjoyed an Easter Egg hunt on the White House lawn.

But with Santorum's absence as a serious talking point for the TV news shows, there are new risks for Romney as the last man standing in the GOP field. (Please. Gingrich and Paul were never contenders.) He will now have the whole show, and the searchlights will illuminate still more his weird pursuit of greatness. It has quickly begun with, say, his unqualified endorsement of the Paul Ryan budget, a reclamation project that has already failed once. Even the right-of-center Economist Magazine described it as "unworkable". And should I mention that liberal Nobelist economist Paul Krugman calls it the "most fraudulent" budget in history?

It will now be left to Romney tell us , day after day, why it it isn't.

And will he explain to the 99 percenters why, as a "regular" guy in the midst of a presidential campaign , he is engaged in a multimillion dollar renovation of his California beachfront home to include a four-car elevator? That revelation did help distract the national media's gasping dog-on-the-car roof story.

If I were a Romney advisor, I would urge him to negotiate with Santorum to hang around quite visibly until the GOP convention. Santorum insists that's his plan anyway. But it's purely a symbolic presence that isn't going to intrude on Romney's lonely path in the months ahead.

Come to think of it: Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann might be helpful returnees to the trail, too. An Etch a Sketch will not do much when he's out there alone.

A penthouse parking spot with view of ocean

IT HAS BEEN A busy week in the higher levels of public life that, among other things, has added broccoli and automobile elevators to the modern narrative of witless political and judicial behavior.

Let's begin with the news from McMitt Romney's camp that the candidate has decided to wait until after the campaign to go forward with his four- story auto elevator that will be added to his

California mansion.

It is one of the few wise decisions to arrive from the Romney people. How do you look into the eyes of the 99 percenters and tell them in your own modest estimation that the car lift won't cost that much? Besides, it is merely part of a $12 million expansion of the seaside hearth that may very well show up on the Wealth Channel on AT&T TV.

Not even the luxurious Hearst mansion up the way offered that kind of parking space. Romney defends his investment as a way of solving a need to find a place for four cars.

Vanity Fair suggested he could easily ease the expense by getting rid of a few cars. In my case, there are days when I wonder if can I ease my 19-year-old station wagon from the garage to the driveway. I know. Envy is a terrible thing.

* * * * *

OK, surely you have heard about the broccoli thing. That was how Justice

Scalia during the health care reform hearings went about contending that if you can order people to buy health insurance, you can also mandate them to buy broccoli. (Even I would oppose that!) But what else can you expect from the right-wing political majority on the court that has some other weird stories in its resume. Justice Thomas, we are told, was struck dumb when he was appointed to the court and hasn't uttered a word from the bench in several years. Thomas, who once went to a seminary to prepare for a life as a Catholic priest, only needs to lean slightly forward for a signal from Scalia on how to vote. Then there is Justice Alito, who has shown up at several right-wing political fund raisers as one of their stars. When confronted by reporters, he shushed them by saying he didn't think his presence at these fund-raisers was "important". We are left to imagine how it would have gone for a Democratic justice who took a table at an Obama fund-raiser this year.

* * * * *

Finally, the pundits are declaring Romney to be the Republican nominee-designate if he wins the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. Everyone in the GOP establishment has been rushing to his side to endorse him these days. It's rumored that even Lincoln and

Reagan endorsed him posthumously. Meantime, there was his nemesis Santorum insisting on TV Sunday that he was going all the way to the convention. Hence, today's appropriate painting (above) of Marc Chagall's "Two Clowns on Horseback". Giddyup!

Obama and Ahmadinejad: Santorum's one of a kind

IF YOU HAVE the slightest doubt about McRick Santorum's desperate (if hopeless) quest to win the GOP nomination, check his campaign's latest attack ad on President Obama. It should be easy enough to find on the Internet. The 65-second ad is titled "Obamaville" and pictorially cross-references Obama and Ahmadinejad with quickly alternating head shots. Although there is no mistake about the ad's projection of the president as the Iranian leader, Santorum's spokesman Hogan Gidley told NBC News that it would be "absurd" to conclude that the ad suggests Obama and Ahmadinejad are the same person.

The Democratic National Committee, of course, is outraged that the Republican would stoop this low and is responding with its own ad to denounce Santorum. If they need some humble advice, I would suggest a counter-ad alternating the photos of Santorum and Rush Limbaugh. I would have preferred Torquemada, the notorious Spanish Inquisition perpetrator, but who would remember him today?

Santorum declares a tired war on New York Times

You'd have to think that Rick Santorum is wearing down from his saintly campaign grind when he accuses a New York Times reporter of bullshit. It escaped from his lips on Fox News when he said the reporter misquoted him as saying Mitt Romney was the "worst Republican in the country to put up against Obama." (By other accounts, Santorum did say that, folks.)

Since McRick and I each grew up in coal mining towns I would say, however, that having lived among the miners, the choice of words to describe the paper could have been a lot more ethnically colorful - particularly at the Kosciusko Hall on Saturday nights.

So here we go. If you can't whip the guy ahead of you in the primaries, you run against the New York Times. Republicans have been doing it since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

But Santorum takes this pandering to the illiterati a step farther by insisting: "If you haven't cursed out a New York Times reporter during a campaign, you're not really a good Republican, is the way I look at it."

By the first day of summer, real Republicans will have to sign a Santorum pledge that they are real Republicans by cursing that paper in Manhattan. Not even Grover Norquist's no-tax pledges can top that when you're looking for authenticity - which is sort of scarce these days in the GOP front lines. Who will be the first really real Republican to sport a t-shirt that says, "Don't blame me. I'm a really real Republican."?

Too bad they weren't available when McRick spoke at the Summit County Lincoln Day dinner. A lot of folks, from the chairman on down, would be wearing them today.

Santorum: I don't care about the jobless

IF YOU ARE WONDERING how Rick Santorum is breaking new ground as a pretender to the White House throne, check his latest toxic reference to people who are out of work:

"I don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn't matter to me. My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment."

He said what?!?!? Yep, that was how he reacted to Mitt Romney's frequent references to being highly qualified to preside over America's economy. And that was a single day before the Illinois primary.

But we shouldn't be misled by Santorum's daring, finger-pointing assault on his opponents - particularly Romney's Mormonism, which some people argue is a cult below the reach of Christianity.

Fact is, Santorum is practicing his Catholicism as a cult, much of which he has developed from his close association with Opus Dei, the secretive Catholic society of true believers. The former Pennsylvania senator leaves no doubt that his heated religious war on secularism - which embraces a war on contraceptives, women's health and pandemic pornography - has given him cover to utter his maniacal indifference to the unemployed and human decency.

(For the full story on Santorum and Opus Dei, you can find it in today's online Washington Post.)

Meantime, keep in mind that Santorum's wife Karen says that her hubby is running for president because it's God's will. Sorry, but Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, two dead-end ex-candidates, also told us that God willed them to run.

If that were so, the Lord led these people away from the promised land.

Tina Fey is back; Puerto Rico to Santorum: No mas!

SARAH PALIN, UNDAUNTED BY a movie that casts her as a dope, says she will go to the Republican convention in Tampa because she's "not closing the door" on anything. That can only mean that she has more fame and misfortune in her summer vacation plans, and that (1) she can see the White House from the convention stage or (2) she is, in fact, a winking dope.

At this point, my problem with her is that she always seems to be Sarah Palin playing Tina Fey who played Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. And now to complicate matters, she may start playing Julianne Moore who plays Sarah Palin in Game Change. If that happens, Katie Couric will have her hands full asking all three of them which newspapers they read, don't you think?

But we'll know for sure when she arrives in Tampa that she freakin' well is serious when she tells the media that, of course, she can clearly see the White House from her perch in Florida.

As she tells it like it never was, there will be other dopes in the crowd who will nod in approval.

* * * * *

WILLARD ROMNEY said this week end that he "can't take a stand" on U.S. troop withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't have enough information!. But he did opine that things don't seem to be going very well in the decade-long conflict and that President Obama must share the blame for his "lack of leadership".

He said what?/?/?

Among Obama's failures is lack of experience in running a business, Romney said, insisting that even though the economy is improving Obama made it worse. Finally, he says he's quite wealthy and won't apologize for it. And he tells us that Obama is a "lightweight?

* * * * * *

Finally the week-end brought McRick Santorum bad news from Puerto Rico, where he was clobbered by the voters in the wake of of his decree on English-spoken statehood. Did I hear them say, "No mas!" ?

His latest fervent crusade is against what he calls a "pandemic" of pornography. Like Romney, he blames Obama for an absence of leadership, accuses the president of being soft on porn by his "refusal to enforce obscenity laws."

We recall a day when Mayor Ralph Perk staged an anti-porn conference in Cleveland and went on endlessly about men who bed down with inflated rubber dolls. My hunch is that some still do, and will continue to so long after Santorum moves on to his very own monastery.

Good grief: The discussion will continue manana

OK. I think Mitt Romney finds something to love about Rush Limbaugh. Maybe a lot of things. So I'd better include this part in the Romney chronicles before he finds something not to love about Rushbo. (Did I tell you that Limbaugh is an honorary member of the Republican caucus in Congress? He is, folks. ) The latest dispatch from the front reports that McMitt thinks Bill Maher is a garbage mouth - which the comedian can certainly be at times - but Rushbo is another matter , even when he tells his listeners to believe that Sandra Fluke is a "slut" and a "prostitute".

In a serial appearance on Fox's dark side, Romney, who is a presidential candidate of sorts,tried to put some daylight between Maher and Limbaugh. You may recall when the Fluke story erupted, McMitt said of Limbaugh's slander, "it's not the language I would have used" - a meek response that hardly earned him a red badge of courage. But he updated that remark to Sean Hannity, crooning, "Well, you know, I find it hard to disagree with Rush Limbaugh on topics."

He said what?!?!?

Romney, who has Darwinian tendencies, also says he is quite rich and won't apologize for it.

We figured that we had better get to that quickly because now Romney and McRick Santorum have changed the subject to whether English should be the official language of Puerto Rico, which it already is along with Spanish.. Santorum has created a stir before the Puerto Rican Republican primary by saying English must prevail if Puerto Rico has any chance of becoming America's 51st state. It was enough to force one of his delegates, Hector Perez, to bolt, only to be replaced by Carlos Baerga, the former Indians second baseman and fellow Christian conservative who said he admired Santorum for having been a longtime supporter of Puerto Rican interests. Besides, Carlos, proving there is life after the Indians, said that he had played for a half-dozen teams and joining one more wouldn't possibly hurt.

Since then, there has been some twisting and turning by Santorum to explain what he really meant while Romney tried to tell us what he really intends to do about it. In this instance, neither guy relied on much plain English - certainly not as plain as McMitt repeatedly telling us that he is quite rich and has no intention of apologizing for it. (Not even in a quiet room that he once suggested was where delicate money matters ought to be discussed ).

Santorum said he didn't mean to suggest that all Puerto Ricans should have names like Smith and Jones, not even when they played baseball, nor that they should stop going around saying things like manana and tacos unless they were talking in the privacy of their immediate family.

Back in the states, Romney said he was quite rich and wasn't going to apologize for it.

Santorum, also a Darwinian, once said people shouldn't be lifted from poverty with other people's money. Romney suggested that's not the language he would have used, but he did say he was quite rich and wasn't going to apologize for it.

Hoping to get in the last word, Santorum said teleprompters should be illegal.

A new campaign against teleprompters?

Well, Mitt Romney's Southern Strategy of y'alls' and grits didn't work, not with a Republican electorate that comprised more than 80 pct. white evangelicals in Alabama and Mississippi. So if he gets anywhere near Chicago for the Illinois primary, he would be smart not to rely on pierogies to rescue his campaign. And don't bet $10,000 that the Cubs will win the pennant this year!

Meantime, I see his nemesis, Msgr. Rick Santorum, has set aside his assault on sexual transgressions to bring up another target to make illegal. Teleprompters. He says teleprompters are inauthentic for presidential candidates because somebody else wrote the words. For him, every speech must be full of unscripted passion all the way down to his groin. Let's hope that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Cuyahoga Falls: A friendly host to Santorum

WEEKEND ORTS:

I see that McRick Santorum will be speaking in Cuyahoga Falls Monday night. The suburb is becoming Republican Mayor Don Robart's petting zoo for GOP presidential candidates in the closing days of Ohio's elections. It was a campaign motorcade stop for President George W. Bush, when he was seeking reelection in 2004. Among other things, he charged his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, with wanting to expand the "power and scope" of government. It played well to his hosts, including those with powerful ties to politics and government. Indeed, county party chairman Alex Arshinkoff didn't hesitate to biblically describe the election as a "contest between good and evil." You know the rest of the story.

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I again caught a glimpse of McRick Santorum roaring that "faith has been driven out of the public square" - which is puzzling since everything he says about faith is televised to the public square every moment of the day. I am even more baffled by the empty charge in a country with 500 religious radio and TV programs in a billion-dollar industry run by conservative religious groups. Among them: Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University; and Jerry Falwell Ministries, now operated by the late Moral Majority leader's two sons. These two mammoth operations alone account for more than $700 million in revenue, according to a report by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hmmm...

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More and more states and cities are rising to an understanding of what true democratic rights are all about in a free society. So it was good to read a Beacon Journal report this morning that Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, Canton Mayor William Healy II and Stow Mayor Sara Drew have signed a national Freedom to Marry resolution supporting same-sex marriage. They will doubtless hear from critics , but so what? Unlike the Republican pols who race around the country demanding that government get off the backs of individuals while also invading the very same personal lives, the mayors have qualified for the new enlightenment that says to Big Brother: Mind your own business in how we want to present ourselves at the altar.