Our Luck Has Run Out

On September 12, 2001, the world was with us. Even Iran and Qaddafi were extending offers of assistance. Our long-time friends, like France, were ready to follow us into Hell if that would help. The Bush Administration's ham-handed manipulation and cement-headed diplomacy quickly turned most of the world from our blood compatriots into, at best, disgusted neutrals, and at worst, active antagonists. Whether through ineptitude, stupidity, or malice, the Bush Administration failed to address the real causes of the terrorist attacks five years ago. Instead, these frat-boys with too-powerful toys scratched their balls, beat their chests, and declared freedom the enemy of the terrorists. Dutifully, they set to work to dismantle that freedom, presumably to reduce the target.

But, let's go back twenty-four hours.

President Bush has just spent the night at an exclusive resort in Florida. Surface-to-air missiles are on the roof of the resort. Shortly after 6 am, a van with four men said to be of Middle Eastern descent arrives at the resort, claiming to have arranged an interview with Bush. They are turned away.

According to the 9-11 Commission Report, at 8:32, a flight attendant uses an Airphone to contact American Airlines and report that Flight 11 has been hijacked. The conversation lasts for 12 minutes. Among the details she provides are that the hijackers appear to be of Middle East descent, have stormed the cockpit and that it appears that the pilots are no longer flying the plane. She says that they have a bomb, have stabbed two other attendants and killed one passenger.

At 8:35 am, Bush leaves the resort for a twenty minute ride to an elementary school for a Photo Op. Two minutes later, according to the Commission Report, NORAD is notified that Flight 11 has been hijacked and has turned towards NYC; the FAA requests that fighter jets be scrambled.

At 8:46 Flight 11 hits WTC Tower 1. Accounts are conflicting over when Bush was finally told. Some have him being told while on his limo ride, others immediately upon his arrival at the school at 8:55. He has said (several times) that he saw the video of the first plan hitting the tower on a TV right before he entered the classroom. This is untrue as the first video was not aired until late that evening. In any event, everyone agrees that Bush was told that the plane had struck the tower before he went into the classroom. What else Bush was told is the subject of varying reports.

At about 9:01, Cheney turned on the television to watch the coverage of the first plane strike when, at 9:03 he witnessed the second strike. At 9:05, Andrew Card told the President “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” (Most of this narrative is taken from the Commission Report, which you can search here.) What happened next deserves to be seen in it's painful entirety.

Very soon after the first attack, I had received a call from a friend who told me to put on CNN. I did and called the rest of the office into the conference room -- many of us had long contacts with NYC and knew people in the Towers and the area. We all witnessed the second plane hit. Before the President picked up "My Pet Goat" we were on the phone to friends and relatives in the area and had a discussion about the likely sources of the attack. By the time that the President was talking to the students at a podium in the school, we had closed the office for the day, cancelled appointments, and sent everyone home to be with their families and in touch with loved ones and friends in New York. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a cousin's son was at that moment climbing the stairs in Tower 1, a NYC firefighter off that day, he reported to the scene without being called. He was never seen again.

All the while, my President stood stock still at 9 am. Then he scurried around the country, hiding and occasionally peeking out from under his covers.

Five years later, our long-standing alliances are shaken and bent, the potential for new alliances is broken, our vulnerability to terrorist attack is unchanged, the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission (itself resisted by Bush) are all but ignored, and our civil liberties under attack by our own Government.

Imagine where we could be today had we had a real leader, a person of vision and history, leading an executive branch of talent and expertise. Over the course of our history, we have been fortunate to have such people at the fore exactly when we needed them -- Franklin, Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. Our luck has run out.

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Casey Campaign Says Desperate Santorum Behind False Poll Rumor

On Friday, a new Pennsylvania blog claimed to have a source who had a source who said an internal Casey Poll showed the race closing to within the margin of error, with Santorum at 44% and Casey at 47%. The rumor was dutifully crowed o'er by the Santorum-supporting blogs (PoliPundit, SantorumBlog, RedState, Right Side of the Rainbow, DeSales for Rick) and whined o'er by the Casey supporters, with both sides treating it as fact.

Our initial reaction was dubious, for a number of reasons. So, calling on our long-ago, done and buried, journalism career, we simply put it to the Casey camp. An e-mail to Larry Smar, Casey's campaign chief spokesperson [haste makes waste -- just noticed I left out "spokesperson" here -- Jay Reiff is Casey's campaign manager, Larry Smar the press guy -- ABFS], was promptly returned. Smar denied that there was any such internal and put the source of the rumor on a desperate Santorum campaign which has been mired at or below 40% despite an early and expensive ad buy:

You should know that you can't believe everything you read on blogs. There isn't a shred of truth to that post.

Ever[] since Gallup/USA Today published a poll last week showing us again leading by double digits, the Santorum camp has been in spin overdrive. First, Santorum told MSNBC that is was a "bogus poll."

Next, the NRSC reheated a leftover press release rehashing old polls to claim Santorum was surging--ignoring the latest numbers to the contrary. Nobody bought it. Now they are shopping around a right-wing blog post about some bogus internal Casey poll.

It is important to note that the Gallup poll was the first public poll released since we started our ad buy.

So Santorum and his allies have aired $7 million in TV ads. The third-party groups that have been spending millions helping Santorum are now required to be off the air. It looks like Santorum has blown most of his cash-on-hand advantage. And we still have a double-digit lead and Santorum's numbers are still anchored at or below 40%.

No wonder Santorum is calling Gallup polls bogus and making up fake Casey polls.

Smar makes a number of noteworthy points here. As we said a couple of weeks back, Santorum's inability to move out of the upper thirties/low forties in polling negates any Republican claim of a momentum for the flailing incumbent. The fact that, after almost two months of early advertising, Santorum's team has been unable to move his numbers up is rather telling. If Smar is correct about the size of Santorum's ad buys -- $7 million -- then the Senator has indeed blown his cash-on-hand lead. As of June 30, Santorum's reported cash on hand was $9.4 million, against Bob Casey's reported $5.4 million. The loss of the cash advantage, combined with the loss of non-candidate-based advertising 60-days out from the election, could make for some desperate times for Santorum.

The Senator is much further from winning this campaign than the 6 or 8-point gaps in some recent polls suggest. He is a multi-term incumbent, stuck at or below 40, is consistently rated by Pennsylvanians lower than nearly all other US Senators, has terrible unfavorables, and has been joined at the hip to a Bush Adminstration which gets some of its lowest marks from PA voters. If, in addition to all of that, he has blown his huge cash advantage . . . . get the butter, Mabel, the toast is almost ready.

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Casey Internal Polls Said to Show Race Within MOE

Supposedly, a Casey Campaign internal poll now shows him leading Senator Santorum 47-44%. This report comes from a Pennsylvania blogger who says that the information comes from a source not inside the Casey camp, who supposedly heard it from a Casey insider in Washington. [sarcasm] Despite the outstanding provenance of the information [/sarcasm], I have some doubts.

The report claims that the Santorum rise and Casey drop was the result of the recent Meet the Press meet-up. That's dubious. I have not seen the Nielsens, but I would be shocked if a meaningful number of potential Pennsylvania voters watched the broadcast. The media coverage of the event largely agreed that there wasn't any winner to the face-off and that both men held their own. Also, I would expect that the Santorum internal pollings would be similar to the purported Casey numbers. If that were the case, the Santorum team would be leaking their polling all over the place, and that hasn't happened.

It will be interesting to see if the Casey campaign denies the report.

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Is Santorum Mixing Campaign and Senate Office Data?

At the outset of the Pennsylvania Senate Race, I signed up at the Santorum website in order to gain access to the information there. Among other things, when I signed up, I was asked to identify the issues in which I had an interest. Among them, I listed the environment.

While I corresponded with Senator Santorum's office prior to this election cycle -- never that I recall on any environmental issue. I have written to him with respect to military pay issues, blood diamonds, civil rights, and flag-burning. Other than the flag-burning and miltary pay, all other correspondence was at least two years ago. I never before received a spontaneous e-mail from my junior Senator.

Yet, today, I received from his Senate Office -- not the campaign mind you, but his Senate Office -- an email beginning "Knowing of your interest in preserving our Commonwealth's environment". Now, unless in addition to all of his other powers, the Senator is claiming to be psychic, the only communication which I have had with him indicating my interest in the environment was through his campaign website.

The Senate Ethics Manual has an extensive chapter on this sort of thing, and makes it pretty clear that mixing campaign information with Senate resources is a no-no:

Title 31 of the United States Code, section 1301(a) states that ‘‘appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as otherwise provided by law.’’ This principle of federal appropriations law has been interpreted in Congress to mean that congressional employees receive publicly funded salaries for performance of official duties and, therefore, campaign or other non-official activities should not take place on Senate time, using Senate equipment or facilities. . . . Senate employees are compensated from funds of the Treasury for regular performance of official duties. They are not paid to do campaign work. In the words of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia: ‘‘It is clear from the record that Congress has recognized the basic principle that government funds should not be spent to help incumbents gain reelection.’’

Since the combination of my e-mail address and interest in the environment could only have been found in the campaign database, I've got to conclude that there's been some mixing of purposes going on here. It may or may not have technically violated Senate Rules. But it sure doesn't smell good.

I had a similar experience with Republican Senate Candidate Katherine Harris. Way back when she first decided to run for the US House, I received an e-mail from her announcing her candidacy. The e-mail said that my address had been obtained from prior communications with Ms. Harris.

The only prior communications that I had with Ms. Harris had been when she interfered with Democracy, as Secretary of State. You might recall that -- that was when Gore beat Bush but not the Supreme Court. In a reply to the Harris announcement, I wondered aloud about the propriety of the partisan use of the property of the State of Florida (the Secretary's offical correspondence files) in her campaign. I didn't hear from her again.

I'm just sayin' . . . .

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ABFS - Destination of the Day

ABFS was selected as the "Pennsylvania Destination of the Day" for September 5 by About Pennsylvania.

Yay, me.

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Yankees Win -- Casey Strikes Out

I had tickets to yesterday afternoon's Yankees game against the Minnesota Twins (the result of sitting through a couple of hours of rain on Old Timer's Day before the game was called before the Yankees came to bat). Tori Hunter hit a monster homer run on an early mistake by Rasner, the Yankees' rookie pitcher, called up from the Clippers to provide an extra arm needed due to the doubleheader on Wednesday. But other than the second inning pitch to Hunter, Rasner had a solid outing, going 6, giving up but four hits, one run, and no walks. On the otehr side of the ball, A-Rod blasted two homeruns, Abreu had three doubles, and the (previously) vaunted Minnesota bullpen could not withstand the Yankee offensive power, giving up 8 of the home teams ten runs before (yet another) sell out crowd at The Stadium on a gorgeous, 70-ish, mostly-sunny afternoon in the Home Office of Baseball.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Bob Casey and Rick Santorum had their first face off of the campaign, sitting across the desk from the cherubic, over-rated, lawyer cum political operative cum softball interviewer Tim Russert. Because of the travel-time to The Stadium, our party was on the road well before the airing of MTP. I have purposefully avoided looking at the commentary and blogs on the debate until I had chance to cue up the online replay of the event this morning.

I've done so and have to say that I am disappointed in Casey's performance. (Perhaps the "Casey Strikes Out" heading was too harsh -- but it fit in with the baseball themed opening. Casey more like bunted.) I had been hoping that his staff had adequately prepared him to be something more than just Bobby Casey for this much-anticipated initial encounter with the dark side of the political universe.

Alas, I was hoping for too much. Before looking at some specifics, I found Casey came off as (all-too-typically) short on substance, shorter on ideas, and even shorter still on specifics. He didn't lay a glove on Santorum (although Russert did), while Santorum effectively countered most of Casey's mumbled talking points and followed those up with a few sharp jabs and body blows.

On substance, Santorum was way off base and disconnected from reality. In delivery and demeanor, Santorum mostly looked strong, in control, confident, and self-assured, Casey none of those things. Santorum wore a dark suit, white shirt, deep red tie. Casey (who showed up for the first primary debate looking like he had just stepped off a private country club golf course), wore a dark suit, white shirt and, appropriately, a pale blue tie (he also wore an American Flag lapel pin -- I guess so that we all understood that he was an American).

Iraq -- Santorum: 'Stay THE Course' vs. Casey: 'Stay OF Course'

From the start, Casey demonstrated his weakness -- Russert began by recounting Casey's statements in support of the Iraq war. As recently as the Democratic primary debates, Bob Casey said that he was in favor of staying the course in Iraq -- he was opposed to a timetable, opposed to pulling the troops out of Iraq, and in favor of staying until the mission was accomplished. During the primary debates, he declined the opportunity to say that the vote authorizing the Iraq war was a mistake. Russert gave him another opportunity to join those Democratic Senators who have said that their vote on Iraq was a mistake. He didn't answer the question and Russert let him slide.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s go right to it: the war in Iraq. Mr. Casey, you’re the challenger, you told The Philadelphia Inquirer August 2005 the following:

“Casey said he would have voted for the war considering the evidence at the time, and supported the spending bills that funded the effort.” Knowing what you know today, would you still have voted for the war?

MR. CASEY: (After condolences to Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor's family) Tim, on the war in Iraq, if, if, if a lot of Americans knew now—if they knew then what they know now, they would, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn’t have been fought based upon the misleading of this administration. . . .

MR. RUSSERT: So you would not vote for it today.

MR. CASEY: Based upon the information that we have now, I think that, that a lot of Americans would have serious doubts. I’m not sure there would have even been a vote on Iraq that early in the...

MR. RUSSERT: But in ‘05 you said you’d vote for it. Would you today in ‘06 vote for it?

MR. CASEY: Based upon the evidence that was presented then, yes, which I think has been—was misleading, and I think it was faulty. The intelligence was faulty.

MR. RUSSERT: But today, today is no. Today you would vote no.

MR. CASEY: Today—if we knew then what we know now, sure. I think there wouldn’t have been a vote and I think people would have changed.

Russert only pretended to press him for a direct response to a direct question -- "If he knew then what we know now, would he have voted to authorize the Iraq war?"

Casey ducked it. He talked about how the "American people" wouldn't support the war, how "if a lot of Americans knew now—if they knew then what they know now, they would, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn’t have been fought". What Russert should have said was, 'Mr. Casey we all know how the American people feel about the war, what the people of Pennsylvania deserve to know is how Bob Casey feels about it. So I'd like to ask you again, yes or no Mr. Casey, if you knew then what you know now, would you have voted in favor of the Iraq war?'

This is a top issue on the minds of every voter in America and we in Pennsylvania deserve an answer from Casey. Casey lacks the courage to state clearly his position and that came through at the very start of the joint appearance on MTP. It was not a good start. It got a little worse right away.

After saying that he would not vote to cut off funding because "I’m not ready to abandon this mission", Casey made sounds like he was about -- for the first time I can recall -- to give some specifics on what he would do in Iraq. But, I forgot that this was merely a politician, not a leader, and, after saying that there were "a couple of things" we need, then saying that he would list "four or five", he listed three, or maybe four, but only one specific, I think:

One of them is a question of accountability. . . . Accountability, I think, means replacing Donald Rumsfeld . . . . The second thing we need, I think, in Iraq, in terms of a new direction is to make sure that we have clear and measurable benchmarks. And thirdly, I think what’s happening in Iraq should tell us that we need to transform the mission on the ground. . . . The Iraqis need to take over and take on some of these street patrols, patrols in Baghdad and so many other places. And I think also, Tim, I’ll conclude with this: We need to rebuild the American military. We need to have more Special Forces. I’ve called for a doubling in the number of Special Forces.

You see, I was hoping to hear something like, "Well, Tim, what I would do is put together a three-pronged approach to the problem. First, we need to recognize the mistakes we made in how we went into the war. We need to go back to the world community and say we have a problem in the mid-east and that problem is not just a US problem -- if unresolved it could affect world politics and stability for generations. We need a new approach, a world-approach. I would invite the world to propose solutions. We need to understand how our go-it-alone strategy has alienated so many of our natural allies and we need to work on bringing them back into the picture. Second, Tim, we need to recognize how the credibility of the United States has been hurt -- even among our friends in the Arab world. We need to invite the Arab league into the negotiations and into Iraq. Sure, American troops need to stay and provide support and border security. But the face of the occupied Iraq needs to be more multi-national, needs to be Arabic, if we are to convince the Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world that our mission there is not to secure a US presence and dominance over a significant source of energy in the middle east. And third, we need a real Marshall Plan to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq. Not by awarding no-bid contracts to Haliburton, but by engaging the community of nations and pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to getting the electricity and running water back on -- Tim, are you aware that 90% of Iraq does not have daily electricity and water yet? That is outrageous and it is our fault."

What came after "Well, Tim" hardly mattered -- I wanted to hear some higher-level thinking on the problem and a proposal of concrete solutions.

Instead, we got an answer which disappointingly sounds very much like 'stay the course' (oh, and "double the special forces"). Huh?

Was there any game plan going into this?

Didn't Casey understand that Russert would start with Iraq?

Didn't they think about a way to deliver an early, strong, Senatorial message -- offer a stark contrast with Santorum's strong support of the Bush war on Iraq?

Couldn't they come up with a bold declaration of the failures of the Bush/Santorum policies and the bankruptcy of ideas coming from Washington?

Couldn't they have come up with a way to use Iraq to put Rick Santorum on the defensive right at the start?

Here was there big plan (I guess it was planned), right after Casey gets done with his no-specifics, non-statement on Iraq, he challenges Santorum to disavow Rumsfeld (and lsater, he would ask him to disavow Cheney). Gee, I just hope that no one on the Casey side thought that Santorum would be surprised by this and wouldn't have a strong response at the ready. If they did think that, then I hate to see how they are going to handle the real debates.

Instead of putting Santorum on the defensive, Casey handed him an opportunity to turn the discussion into his Islamic Facists nonsense. It may be nonsense to thinking people, but it has been resonating with the electorate, mainly because of the false linking of the administration's failures in Iraq with the nuclear threat posed by Iran:

MR. CASEY: . . . .And I would just ask Senator Santorum: Donald Rumsfeld, I’ve called for him to be replaced, Rick. Where do you stand on that?

SEN. SANTORUM: I’ll be happy to start there. I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job as the defense secretary, and the problems that we are confronting are problems of an enemy that’s a very potent enemy—much more potent than I think anybody ever anticipated. You know, we have a great game plan. We go it just like a football team. You go in there, you do your best, but the enemy has a vote, the enemy can react and change its tactics, and they have, and they’ve been very, very effective. We need to go out there and continue to fight this war on Islamic fascism. Not just, as my opponent likes to focus on, just the war in Iraq. That’s a front of a multi-front war in which we’re fighting against an enemy that’s a very dangerous enemy. . . . So we have a very difficult enemy. We have an enemy that now is trying to get nuclear weapons in, in, in the form of Iran, and one that—you know, we can ask all these questions about process and procedure, most of which I would argue have been answered already. The real tough questions is how do you win this war? How do you go out and, and, and prosecute a war that—successfully? And I’ve laid out a very clear vision on that, and my opponent has not.

That last phrase hung in the air (and was an effectively-repeated theme). Casey never responded to it.

Russert was more prepared than Casey. He immediately cited the report (released late Friday before a holiday weekend), which labeled sectarian fighting as a larger problem in Iraq than terrorists -- in other words, 'No, Rick, even your own Pentagon says we are not fighting them over there, we are reaping the fruit of our own incompetence.'

MR. RUSSERT: Let me talk about a Pentagon report on Friday. Our ambassador to Iraq has said the principal problem is not foreign terrorists, it’s sectarian violence, Sunni vs. Shiite. The Pentagon report on Friday said this: “Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said. ... ‘Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife.’ ... ‘The last quarter, as you know has been rough,’ [Asst. Secretary of Defense Peter] Rodman said. ‘The levels of violence are up and the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing.’”

This is Shiite vs. Sunni, Iraqi vs. Iraqi. . . . What do you do about that, stay the course?

Santorum tried to move the question back to his Islamofacist argument, but Russert stopped him with a point that Casey was unable to make -- that the Bush policy created the opportunity for Iran to leverage the influence it has been developing in Iraq for over twenty years:

SEN. SANTORUM: . . . . And Iran, which is, which is the principal stoker of this, this Shia/Sunni sectarian violence, would love nothing more to see than the Iraqi democracy fail because of that. This is a tactic of Iran to disrupt the—our, our efforts in Iraq by, in fact, trying to defeat the Sunnis. So there’s, there’s no question, this is a very complex war.

. . . .But understand, at the, at the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq. It is causing most of the problems, obviously, with Israel today. It is, it is the one funding these organizations. And is the, is the country that we need to focus on in this war against Islamic fascism.

MR. RUSSERT: So Iran now has more influence in Iraq than they did before Saddam Hussein?

SEN. SANTORUM: Just understand.

MR. RUSSERT: Is that true?

SEN. SANTORUM: I would say that they have influence in, in, in a free country where you have an opportunity to express yourself, if you will. Yes.

(Santorum looked bad here.) Soon after this exchange, Santorum looked just silly trying to defend his claim that the weapons we went to war over were found in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Santorum, leading up to the war. In October of 2002, this is what Rick Santorum said, “Saddam Hussein’s regime, is a serious and grave danger to the safety of the American people.” “Given the threat posed to he world by his weapons of mass destruction programs...” Would you now acknowledge that that was not correct?

SEN. SANTORUM: What I would say is that we have found weapons of mass destruction, they were older weapons, but we have found chemical weapons. The report was just released not too long ago that, that said that there were over 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, the president has accepted the report of his two task force and said, “That the chief weapons inspector has issued his report. Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there.”

SEN. SANTORUM: Well, there were all sorts of weapons that our intelligence believed were there. They thought that they were new weapons. So far we, we did not—we have not found any new weapons. But we have found old weapons, weapons from the Iran/Iraq conflict, and we found over 500 and the report says that there were more.

Santorum continued with the (thoroughly debunked) argument that Bin Laden and Saddam were working together prior to 9/11, saying that "we have certainly lots of information about the fact that they were working with other terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda". This a major weakness of Santorum's support for Iraq which Casey should be hitting all over the park -- that Santorum is making ridiculous claims which even the President has rejected, that Santorum is way out there, that he is even further divorced from the reality of Iraq than this misguided adminstration.

Instead, when Casey interrupts and asks for a chance to make a point, he walks right into Russert's prep, seemingly like no one had prepared Casey to deal with it:

MR. CASEY: ...let me respond to that. Can I have a few minutes to respond?

MR. RUSSERT: Please.

MR. CASEY: Couple of things. First of all, what you just heard was Senator Santorum’s long answer, which basically says, “Stay the course in Iraq.” It’s a completely different point of view. I think we’ve go got to change the course and, and have new leadership. Part of that is that, that accountability I’ve talked about.

MR. RUSSERT: But stop there—stop there Mr. Casey.

MR. CASEY: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: I think there’s an evolution in your thinking. Let me go back to April of ‘05, the Philadelphia Daily News said, “The key thing now is to finish the job.” That’s Bob Casey, quote/unquote. October, “Some people think that pulling out is a good idea and a timeline is a good idea - I don’t agree with that. We’ve got more work to do to make sure that we get it right.” Then in June of ‘06, Bob Casey said, “He doesn’t believe U.S. troops should be removed from Iraq immediately but should be by the end of the year. He said the country has a new government and that it’s time for the Iraqis to take a greater role in defending themselves.” Should we finished the job? Or should we remove the troops by the end of the year?

MR. CASEY: Tim, I’ve never favored a deadline in, in, in this whole campaign. Because we have to do everything we can to, to hold the administration accountable. And when you’re—when it’s not going well, you, you see the, the Pentagon report this past—just in the last couple of days, this thing is headed toward civil war. We don’t know if it’s there yet. We hope it’s not. But when you have it heading in the wrong direction, you’ve got to have a new course. And, and...

MR. RUSSERT: So, so when John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, introduced legislation which says, “All troops out by July of 2007,” Bob Casey votes no.

MR. CASEY: Absolutely.

So, instead of being able to call Santorum out on his faulty rationale for going into and staying in Iraq, Casey gets called out on his own inspecific, shifting positions and refusing to set a goal of getting us out of Iraq in 2007. Instead, what Casey seems to offer us is "stay a little different course".

Iraq took up a significant part of the MTP hour. But at no point did Casey lay a glove on Santorum. He let Santorum spew indefensible arguments for what we did and what we are continuing to do. Even when he started to make what sounding like a decent, somewhat original point about using special forces to ferret out nuclear weapons technology on the black market, Russert stopped him in his tracks with yet another obvious question which Casey seemed unprepared to answer.

MR. CASEY: Tim, you’re hearing, you’re hearing a long speech here about, about other speeches he’s given. What we need and what the president needs to tell us about, and what this senator won’t hold the president accountable for is a plan. One of the things that we could be doing, not just when it comes to Iraq, but when it comes to the, the global war on terror, is to have more Special Forces out there. Doubling the number of Special Forces, having counterproliferation units run by the Special Forces that intercept nuclear, biological, chemical, potential weapons around the world—finding them before the terrorists get them. That’s the kind of on-the-ground thing. We don’t need more speeches.

And I think what you’ve unearthed here, Tim...

MR. RUSSERT: Do we need more troops?

MR. CASEY: We need—what we need in Iraq right now is some accountability for this administration. And part of that is making sure that, as we, as we have our troops on the ground, that they can pull back at what the Pentagon calls “level two” readiness, they can still be there, but the Iraqis can take the lead and get the Americans out of the front line already. Keep the American...(unintelligible).

MR. RUSSERT: And what if you, what if you left behind a haven for terrorists? Then what do you do?

MR. CASEY: Well, I don’t—that’s not the, that’s not the, the objective here. The objective here is to make sure we’re doing everything possible to give the American people the information they need and to protect our troops. And I think it’s an abomination, Tim, when you have people like Rick Santorum, who have rubber-stamped this administration 98 percent of the time, did not call for or insist upon the best body armor when those troops needed it.

Weak. It should not have been that hard to prepare for this appearance and for the Iraq issue. He should have anticipated every question from Russert and every issue and had solid responses -- Santorum certainly did. And, even if Santorum's responses were not defendable, they were clearly prepared in advance and Casey failed to effectively counter them. Combined with a failure to effectively lay out a clear alternative on Iraq, the Iraq portion of the discussion went, inexplicably, to Santorum.

On Illegal Wiretapping -- Casey Agrees with Santorum

Santorum maneuvered the discussion to the illegal wiretapping programs that the Bush Adminstration secretly undertook. In response, Casey declined the opportunity to talk about a nation of laws, about respecting and incorporating the freedoms that Iraqis didn't have under Sadaam in every aspect of our government. Nope, instead, Casey lined right up with the Republicans in supporting the administration's surveillance programs and didn't even challenge Santorum's baseless assertion that the illegal programs were the foundation for the British interception of the terrorist plots to blow up airplanes over the Atlantic:

MR. CASEY: . . . .Let me, let me just have a moment on, on Iran. Rick, you just talked about, and you’ve heard him a lot talking about Iran. You’ve heard him a lot talking about the terminology of, of the war on terror. He calls it Islamic fascism and, and he, and he talks about the terminology and changing the terms. What we need, Rick, is not a change in the terminology, we need to change the tactics. And we’ve got to make sure that even as you’re debating whether or not we call Osama bin Laden a terrorist or a fascist, I don’t think that really matters. We need a plan. You’re in the Senate, you have votes, you should be leading that effort. And I, I think after it’s over, after you get the terminology right, maybe you can have a seminar in Washington about whether bin Laden, whom we should be finding and killing, whether he’s a dead terrorist or a dead fascist. And I think you should worry more about finding him and killing him.

SEN. SANTORUM: My, my opponent has, my opponent has, my opponent has no plan. The idea—all he’s suggested is his plan is Special...

MR. CASEY: I just gave a plan. Where’s yours?

SEN. SANTORUM: All you, all you suggested with your plan is more Special Forces.

MR. CASEY: No, it’s not. That’s not, that’s not all it is.

SEN. SANTORUM: Do you, do you support, do you support more intelligence gathering because your party has been out there...

MR. CASEY: Absolutely.

SEN. SANTORUM: ...trying to, trying to undermine our surveillance programs. You’re the one who’s gone out and said that you have serious questions about our intelligence surveillance programs. What do you think has kept our people safe? What do you think stopped the British, the British attack? You folks have been the party, as you have been the party, of making sure that we don’t have the intelligence gathering capabilities that we need, and, and, and have, have joined in making sure...

MR. CASEY: Rick, Rick, you’re not debating the party, you’re debating me right here.

SEN. SANTORUM: I’m debating you.

MR. CASEY: Yeah.

SEN. SANTORUM: And I—and I’ve looked at your comments saying that you have serious concerns about our, our, our surveillance programs. I don’t. I think they’re surveillance programs that would...

MR. CASEY: No, we should, we should, we should keep the programs and keep the wiretaps...

Not the kind of response that we look for from a Democratic challenger -- agreeing with Santorum and the Republican right.

Military Option on Iran -- Santorum Favors Sanctions, Casey Favors Sanctions

In response to Russert's direct question, Santorum gave a direct response -- he does not favor a military option in Iran. Well, sort of. He wants us to foment rebellion in Iran and foment military pressure from other "pro-democracy forces outside [Iran]". Well, there's something which the United States has a lot of credibility in -- encouraging nationals to rise up against their oppressive regimes (sarcasm alert). But instead of challenging Santorum's "plan" for Iran as making no sense (and almost no one believes that it does), Casey jumped on the Sanctions bandwagon and supported Santorum's Iran bill.

Casey himself has a little problem here -- during the Democratic primary debates he stated his support for using nuclear weapons on Iran in order to stop their nuclear development program. Russert's crack staff apparently failed to turn that one up and Russert never mentioned it. But Casey could have come off strong here by attacking Santorum's assumptions about fomenting democratic revolutions in the region (it worked soooo well in Iraq, twice) (irony alert).

Conclusion

Half the MTP appearance focused on Iraq -- it should have been softball after softball issue for Bob Casey. But Casey never made solid contact with the ball. Part of the reason was that he was poorly prepped by his staff, part of it was that he has an aversion to taking definable positions, and part of it is that he doesn't appear to have a very solid understanding of the issues. The remainder of the program was similar -- on balancing the budget and social security, for example, Russert was very frustrated by Casey's continued refusal inability to provide specifics.

At the end of the day, MTP was a warm-up. Casey didn't lose, Santyorum didn't win. Santorum did better than he should have because Casey didn't do nearly as well as a strong Democratic challenger could have (Casey did better than he did in the Democratic primary debates, in which both of his opponents ran circles around him on policy and debate points.) But, not many "real" people tuned in early Sunday morning on a holiday weekend to see this showdown.

Recall that Howard Dean's first appearance on the program was a disaster which was quickly forgotten as he improved as a national-scene candidate. He hit homerun after homerun on his next appearance. One can hope that Casey can do likewise -- he's got plenty of time before the real debates in October. In the meantime, he needs to focus on distinguishing himself from Santorum and less time on finding common ground with one of the lowest-rated Senators. I am hopeful that someone in the Casey campaign will send him a memo on why Santorum has got such a high disapproval rating in Pennsylvania.

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Capital Hill Staffers Name Santorum One of Dumbest Senators (Again)

Washingtonian Magazine's September issue has the results of the mag's annual survey of Capital Hill staffers. This year they had 1700 respondents. This year, Rick Santorum tied for second place (with George Allen) in the "No Rocket Scientist" category -- identified by those who know him best as one of the dumbest Senators in town. From what we could tell, Rick has been a repeat winner in this category. It seems that he has wins in 2005 (tie) and 2004 (tie). He came in third in 2002. Consistent with his falling off the perch as the number one dumbest Senator, he also finished second in the "Falling Star" category.

Pennsyltucky Politics has more coverage.

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Appease this, asswipe

From Norman Solomon at Common Dreams:

On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country." A couple of days later, the New York Times cited a "senior American official" who "said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis."

On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: "American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name." Washington had some goodies for Saddam's regime, the Times account noted, including "agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million." And while "no results of the talks have been announced" after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, "Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq."

A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the U.S. government "granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years." The story recalled that "Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here," and the dispatch mentioned in passing that "State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state."

Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld's December 1983 visit with Saddam. He went on to use poison gas later in the decade, actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration.

As the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan's point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam's military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to U.S. intelligence sources. "In response to the gassing," journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, "sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most U.S. technology. The measure was killed by the White House."

The USA's big media institutions did little to illuminate how Washington and business interests combined to strengthen and arm Saddam Hussein during many of his worst crimes. "In the 1980s and afterward, the United States underwrote 24 American corporations so they could sell to Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction, which he used against Iran, at that time the prime Middle Eastern enemy of the United States," writes Ben Bagdikian, a former assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, in his book The New Media Monopoly. "Hussein used U.S.-supplied poison gas" against Iranians and Kurds "while the United States looked the other way."

From Keith Olberman:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

From Me:

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You Look Iraqi -- Please Take a Seat in the Rear

Raed Jarrar is an American architect of Iraqi descent living in America (legally, thank-you very much). He recently returned from a trip to Syria and Jordan, where he visited Lebanese refugee camps and met with members of the Iraq parliament. In his Blog, Raed in the Middle, he notes that the anger towards the United States in connection with the Israeli attacks was palpable and indiscriminate -- it included him:

The other thing you can't miss in Jordan and Syria is people's anger against the US. On more than occasion, I got shouted at because I live in the US. The most interesting incident was during a visit to a Lebanese refugee camp. I was called by two young Lebanese people, and they asked me whether me and the rest of the delegation visiting their shelter where coming from the US. I said yes. They said: "you better get the hell out of here unless you want us to make a scene". I tried to explain that we are the "good" Americans who are against the war, so they said go back home and change your government. "you can't come here visit us in a shelter that we were sent to because of your tax money and your bombs, and expect us to be nice to you". So me and the other Americans got the hell out of there.

He was part of the US antiwar delegation that met with Iraqi MPs and others earlier in August. Tom Hayden was also there and wrote about the meetings in a recent Nation article.

After the week-long trip, he returned to the United States and spent a day in D.C., before taking the bus to New York for his flight home to California. That's when he got a taste of American Freedom, Bush-style.

It started when he passed through the security gates and was "randomly" selected for a more thorough search. He, and his papers, being in order, he was permitted to pass through and proceeded to his gate. While enjoying a snack of grapes, cheese, and orange juice, he was approached by several official and officious representatives of the 'freedom-loving' American government, and Jet Blue.

It seems as though Mr. Jarrar had attracted Jet Blue's attention because he was wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing on it. He was, apparently, unaware of some of the new, albeit unwritten, laws we have in the country today. One of them being that anything arabicish is terroristic until proved otherwise. You see, his t-shirt, which he was wearing in the picture at the head of this article, reprinted, in Arabic and English, the simple slogan "We will not be silent". That's what he thinks. This is American, pal, and we have ways of silencing you:

One of the two men who approached me first, Inspector Harris, asked for my id card and boarding pass. I gave him my boarding pass and driver's license. He said "people are feeling offended because of your t-shirt". . . . I said "I am very sorry if I offended anyone, I didn't know that this t-shirt will be offensive". He asked me if I had any other T-shirts to put on, and I told him that I had checked in all of my bags and I asked him "why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn't it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?" The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said "people here in the US don't understand these things about constitutional rights". So I answered him "I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt".

Oh, so now you want rights? Look, this is a different world after 9/11 and we're sorry, but sometimes you just have to give up a few rights -- like the first amendment (not to mention the fourth and fifth) -- or we'll be fighting your brethren in our grocery stores. Look, all kidding aside, this Inspector Harris had a very persuasive point when he told Mr. Jarrar that "you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads 'I am a robber' and going to a bank". Apparently, Mr. Jarrar had not considered that simply having something written in Arabic was the equivalent of announcing that you're a bank robber.

Not only was he a bank robber, but don't think we could let it pass that the t-shirt was also the slogan of a group of people who are critical of the whole Iraq-war thing. So, not only is he a bank robbing terrorist, but if he is opposing our war policies, our government now views him as the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser. Since the Nazis were fascists, I guess that makes Mr. Jarrar an Islamic Fascist in the eyes of our government. And he's whining over having to change a t-shirt? Why, he's lucky they didn't put him on a plane to occupied Cuba!

Well, now that he understood, he permitted the Jet Blue clerk to buy him a new t-shirt to wear on his flight (because the other passengers were nervous about what those Arabic letters might do if they were permitted to be exposed once in the air). And he thought that was the end of it, but not when you fly Jet Blue, they had another surprise for Mr. Jarrar. They were moving him from the front of the plane -- seat 3a on his confirmed boarding pass -- to the rear -- seat 24a. Mr. Jarrar had this observation from his trip:

It sucks to be an Arab/Muslim living in the US these days. When you go to the middle east, you are a US tax-payer destroying people's houses with your money, and when you come back to the US, you are a suspected terrorist and plane hijacker.

Indeed. He also had a good recommendation that I am passing along. We should let Jet Blue know how we feel about their treatment of Mr. Jarrar. Leave them your comments here.

(h/ts to Ol' Froth and A Spork in the Drawer for their prior coverage of the whole mess.)

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REAL Momentum -- Sestak and Lois Murphy on the Move

Yesterday came the news that the respected conservative political analyst Stuart Rothenberg had thrown the Casey err, Carney-Sherwood dust up for PA-10 into the tossup/tilting R category.

Today it seems that a couple of other Republican Congressmen are battling to retain their seats against "upstart" Dems. The Rothenberg Political Report has placed the PA-6 PA-7 battle between incumbent Republican Curt Weldon and Vice Admiral Joe Sestak in the pure tossup category.

Similarly placed in the pure toss-up list is Lois Murphy's PA-6 campaign against incumbent Jim Gerlach.

This is Murphy's second bid for the seat; she lost a very close race the last time out. Joe Sestak is in his first political run.

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Santorum versus Floods

Rick Santorum on flood victims in Louisiana:

"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving."

Sen. Rick Santorum
Interview with WTAE-TV CH 4 in Pittsburgh
September 4, 2005

Rick Santorum on flood victims in Pennsylvania:

"The $10 million we have secured is critical to ensure that the people of northeastern Pennsylvania will never lose their homes again due to devastating floods. The floods in 1996 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972 have forced the people of the Wyoming Valley to rebuild their lives, homes and families not once but twice. The funding to build new levees and floodwalls, modify closure structures and relocate utilities offers reassurance to the people of the Wyoming Valley that they will never again have to endure the hardship of flood devastation."

Sen. Rick Santorum
Press Statement on federal funding
for Pennsylvania flood control projects
July 17, 2003

[Reprinted from Whiskey Bar (8/6/05)]

Black population in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania -- 1.69%
Black population in Louisiana -- 33%
Black population in New Orleans -- 67.25%

We report, you decide.

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Whistling Past the Graveyard

Santorum has momentum!? That is the conclusion of the wingnut Human Events Online (h/t Santorum Blog) as it tries, ever so desperately, to rally the right to the support of incumbent Rs in trouble. The word on K Street mid-summer was that the smart R money was abandoning Santorum in favor of more profitable purchases. The wingnut machine ramped up the PR and used the late summer polls, which showed the spread between Casey and Santorum narrowing, to promote Their Rick as surging forward and Casey as floundering -- all this, mind you, before Labor Day.

It's downright silly -- Voodoo Politics. A year ago, when pollsters were the only ones paying attention to polls, Santorum was polling in the mid-to-upper thirties, with an occasional foray into the low forties. Today, he is polling in the upper thirties and very low forties. Yes, the spread has narrowed, but that's a natural result of the race being slightly more on the radar and slightly more people thinking seriously about it. Casey polled unduly heavily "early" on in this race because people are fed up with Santorum and Bush, looked for a fresh face, and were sending a message. But they really weren't thinking about it. (Actually, to say that the March polls were "early" in the race is silly -- NOW is "early" in the race. March was wonk time.)

Despite starting his advertising very early (the benefit of all that K Street money) Santorum hasn't gained anything in the last six months except perhaps a return to the R column of disenchanted or "confused" right wing Rs who are easily scared by sex, homosexuals, and brown people speaking Spanish. In the latest WSJ/Zogby poll, Santorum moved a whole 0.2% closer to Casey. (At that rate, he'll pull even in about 2009) Casey, on the other hand, has yet to do enough to define himself in a way that generates passion and, as a result, bunches of people in the late summer polls have yawned when asked to assume the election were held today.

Santorum's approval rating is among the lowest of all 100 Senators, in a state that approves of his fearless leader at a rate lower than the nation as a whole, in a state that has recently had a mini-revolt against incumbents, and in a state that has lost more of its citizens to the fubar excursion into Iraq than 47 other states.

He ain't going nowhere. He doesn't have the room to go up much more than the low forties in which he finds himself mired and Casey will, despite himself, stumble into Washington in January '07.

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Right Wing Analyst Tosses Up Sherwood

The Carney Campaign is on the move. They have announced that the right-wing political analyst, Stuart Rothenberg, has moved their battle against adulterer and alleged mistress abuser Donald Sherwood from the leans-R to the tossup column.

Rothenburg, aligned with right-wing sentiments, is nonetheless a highly regarded analyst of Congressional Races. His paid-subscription newsletter is not widely circulated, but is must reading for political journalists and Congressional-Candidate-Committee-types, and for anyone else who depends on the state of the balance of power in the House.

In his analysis, Rothenberg notes that “"Cong. Don Sherwood has had plenty of problems",” and he calls Chris Carney "“an interesting challenger." He says that Sherwood'’s grip on the District is "“tenuous."” Rothenberg concludes that "This is a very interesting Democratic opportunity and a GOP headache in a very Republican district."

In short, this is major good news for the Carney folks. Sherwood, if not on, is stumbling towards the ropes. (That is a picture of not-his-wife, by the way.)

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Romanelli Files Appeal with PA Supreme Court

As expected, Carl Romanelli has filed an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from the decision of the Commonwealth Court rejecting his argument that the retention election of Justice Newman was the last statewide election on which his signature requirement should have been based.

If you've been paying attention, you know that minor parties in Pennsylvania need to submit petitions bearing the number of signatures equal to at least 2% of the highest vote-getter in the statewide election immediately preceding the general election for which they seek to nominate a candidate.

The Pennsylvania statute (25 P.S. Section 2911(b)) states, in pertinent part, as follows:

Where the nomination is for any office to be filled by the electors of the State at large, the number of qualified electors of the State signing such nomination paper shall be at least equal to two per centum of the largest vote cast for any elected candidate in the state at large at the last preceding election at which State-wide candidates were voted for.

The State Board designated the 2004 election of Casey as "the largest vote cast for any elected candidate in the state at large at the last preceding election at which State-wide candidates were voted for", leading to the 67,000+ signature requirement for this year's minor party candidates.

But, there was a statewide election in 2005 -- the judicial retention election of Justice Sandra Schultz Newman. She won retention with about 800,000 votes, meaning that Romanelli would need submit slightly less than 16,000 signatures.

The Commonwealth Court sided with Casey's party in rejecting Romanelli's argument and it is from that decision which Romanelli has now appealed. The Commonwealth Court ruled that a retention election was not an "election" within the meaning of the statute. Romanelli's argument to the Supreme Court is multi-faceted, but the central point is made obvious by this quote from his appeal:

Objectors to the Romanelli nomination papers argue that the Pennsylvania Election Code does not apply to the retention elections held in the Municipal Election or General Election. The absurdity of their position is exposed when taken to its logical conclusion. If the Election Code does not apply to retention elections then the prohibitions against stuffing the ballot box, 25 P.S.§ 3535 Repeat voting at elections, Bribery, 25 P.S. § 3539, Bribery at elections, among other things, are now perfectly legal with respect to judicial retention elections. This is hardly the legislative intent or judicial interpretation one would expect in a government of laws. Common sense has to prevail here.

From a reading of the statute, it is clear that the legislature did not draw any distinction between rentention elections and any other statewide election. To rule in favor of Casey's party, the Commonwealth Court had to read that distinction into the law because a facial reading required a ruling in favor of Romanelli. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will have to decide if it wishes to write the law or to simply apply it as the legislature wrote it. As my two readers know, I don't hold much faith that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will reach the correct result.

h/t to PoliticsPA for the Appeal.

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Bloggers -- You're On Notice

Create your own.

h/t to Nasty Little Man.

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Casey Has Nine Point lead in New Zogby/WSJ Poll

The results of the latest poll in the Pennsylvania Senate race show Bob Casey leading floundering incumbent Rick Santorum by 9 points. According to the Wall Street Journal, which sponsored a multi-state poll of the Senate races, Pennsylvania voters are siding with their favorite perennial candidate 50.5% to Santorum's 41.7%. This is practically unchanged from the July results in the same poll (in July the spread was 9.0, in August, 8.8), and up from the June 6.6%. Casey's high water mark in this poll was the 9.9% advantage he scored in October, 2005.

The WSJ doesn't release crosstabs for these polls, so we don't have the breakdowns. But it does confirm what we have been saying -- despite the "narrowing" of the spread, Santorum is making nearly zero headway. He picked up a tiny 0.2% over this last month, despite heavy advertising.

But, it is early kids, stay tuned.

{Disclosure: I was a respondent in this poll. You can register to to become a Zogby Interactive polling respondent here.}

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It's Pay-Back Time for Specter

Arlen Specter, a so-called Wednesday Group Republican, begins his stumping for rightwingnut Rick Santorum this week. Specter, who received key support from Santorum which helped Specter ward off Pat Toomey's right-flank assault in 2004, visits Allentown today to help prop up Santorum's efforts to ward off Bobby Casey's attack from the right-center, The Morning Call reports.

It is an expected move -- Specter has frequently said that he won the battle against Toomey thanks in large part to Santorum's help. The relationship between the two has been interesting over the years. Specter is certainly left of Santorum (but not as far left as he would like you to believe). Of course, it is hard to find anyone who is not left of Santorum, although Pat Toomey probably qualified there.

When Santorum first ran for the Senate, Specter sat out the primary and didn't exactly cozy up to him. But when Santorum won the primary in 1994, Specter rushed to his side and even provided him with a campaign manager for his successful Senate run against incumbent Harris Wofford (who had been appointed to fill out John Heinz's term and then won a stunning come from behind victory in the special election). Two years later, Specter ran from for President with Santorum's support. {On Edit: Oops, it is THIS year that the Republicans are running from President.}

But in 2004, when uberconservative Pat Toomey challenged Specter in the Republican primary, Santorum pissed off his base by turning his back on his philosophical compadre in favor of the floundering Specter. That support helped Specter immeasurably and, many say, has been a factor hurting Santorum in this run against Casey. We are told that Santorum's base is lukewarm about him this year because they still feel slighted that they were not successful in getting Toomey the nomination. (I think that's nonsense -- the conservative base is supporting Santorum overwhelmingly according to the polls that provide crosstabs on political ideology.)

Obviously, Specter isn't going to move any conservative Republicans or liberals over to Santorum's side of the ledger. Santorum is hoping that Specter's support can move some moderates his way -- moderates are going to Casey in large numbers. It is unlikely, however, that many moderate Democrats would move to Santorum. After all, Casey is already to the right of moderate Democrats. So what is the best that Santoprum can hope for from Specter? Moving some moderate Republicans his way? It is hard to see how that will help at all. In the recent Quinnipiac poll, Republicans are going for Santorum 3-1 and undecided Republicans are leaning Santorum's way 8-2. Even if Specter moved three-quarters of the 25% of Republicans who aren't favoring Santorum right now, that would hardly result in two points on Santorum's side. Specter is merely paying back a debt -- he's not going to be able to do anything to help Santorum out of the hole that Santorum dug for himself. Santorum is too-far out there, even for Pennsylvania.

The relationship between the two becomes curiouser this year. Santorum has latched onto immigration as his personal wedge issue -- appealing to the rightwing bigots who are worried about brown Spanish-speakers making their towns look different. It's an old Republican strategy and Specter has called "bullshit" to Santorum's claim that the bi-partisan proposals on immigration amount to an amnesty. The two have provided dueling quotes to the media on the subject this year. They have similarly sparred on the Santorum's nutty opposition to stem-cell research.

Nevertheless, they are both good party men and we'll see the "moderate-only-when-compared-to-Santorum" Specter out there stumping for 'lil Ricky until the cows come home in Virginia.

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Santorum versus Bush

More from the Casey YouTube Reality Theatre:

It says something when you know even less than Bush . . . . or are willing to admit less. The more I look at Santorum, and replay these silly statements of his, the less that I am worried about Casey blowing it (those are good days). But then again . . . . it is Bobby Casey, after all . . . . (those are the other days)

The nashing and wailing over Casey's drop in the polls is misplaced. It is still August . . . . once Casey's advertising gets going, people will remember why they made Rick Santorum the lowest-rated Senator in the country. On my good days, I believe that Casey will be back up over 50% and well into double digits by October 1. On the other days . . . .

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Santorum versus Santorum

From the Casey Campaign's YouTube Reality Theatre. It compares the recent (silly) Santorum Polka ad with the (amateur) video of a Santorum speech in 1994 in which he state his preference to move the Social Security retirement age back beyond age 70.

As to the Social Security bill that the Senator chirps about in his Polka ad -- here's what the Philadelphia Inquirer had to say about it:

It would provide a written guarantee to people born prior to 1950 that they will receive all promised Social Security benefits and cost-of-living increases. His bill is a two-fer, at least on paper. It attempts to soothe seniors who fear that Santorum is trying to take away their benefits, and it insinuates the concept that people born after 1950 do not enjoy the same guarantee (hence the need for private accounts).

Technically, this guarantee is no guarantee at all. Congress could rescind it at any time. This proposal is just one more attempt to give private accounts an ideological foot in the door, while the larger problem of Social Security's pending insolvency goes unsolved.

It's a transparent ploy; it's sad to see such stuff coming from someone who, before the President came along, had been a leader in the public debate over Social Security.

This is just another reason why this guy can't get it up over 40% anymore.

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Rasmussen: Casey 48 - Santorum 40

Election Polls 2006: Pennsylvania Senate

Rasmussen weighs in:

After having lagged by as much as twenty-three percentage points this election season, Republican Senator Rick Santorum now trails Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. by only eight, 40% to 48%.

Until now the incumbent has failed to pull within single digits of his opponent. Last month, Santorum suffered an eleven-point deficit in our poll, which he'd shaved from fifteen points in June. But Santorum had also been eleven points behind in March...a gap that in May more than doubled.

This poll has shifted Pennsylvania from “Democrat” to “Leans Democrat” in our Balance of Power summary.

Senator Santorum is still a point behind his best support level of the year. It's a slight dip in Casey's support that has allowed Santorum to draw as close as he is now. That dip might have something to do with recent ads attacking Casey's record as State Treasurer.

A third-party candidacy may also affect the outcome, with 5% of likely voters now supporting Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli. However, it’s worth noting that “some other candidate” attracted 5% of the vote in our previous Pennsylvania poll. Overall, it appears that the shift in the race results from declining enthusiasm for Casey more than any other cause.

Rasmussen makes two noteworthy points -- Romanelli's 5% isn't really affecting anything because that's the same number which has been consistently "other" in the last several polls and the narrowing of the race has more to do with "declining enthusiasm" for Casey. (One rarely sees the word "enthusiasm" in the same sentence with "Casey".)

Once again, Santorum is mired in the 40% zone. His three-poll rolling average in the Rasmussen poll is 39%, his average since March, 38%. In short, he really hasn't moved very much despite his heavy advertising over the last 8 weeks, and what Rasmussen calls his negative attack ads.

Which brings me back to what I said earlier this week and earlier this summer -- Casey's fear of defining himself during a decade of running for statewide office has left Pennsylvania decidedly "unenthusiastic" about this guy. I said the same thing when he was 20-something up in the polls -- he has got to do more than run as the anti-Santorum and vaguely promise to ask tough questions. He needs to engage the voters and Santorum.

It is still his election to lose. His declining numbers in the Rasmussen and other polls isn't translating into better numbers for Santorum. This means that he still has plenty of time to turn those with declined enthusiasm back his way. Of course, if he keeps doing what he's been doing, he also has plenty of time to hand Santorum a win when it should have been a cakewalk.

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New Solar Order

By the great Jim Borgman.

h/t to An Upstep or A Downstep for the link.

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Other People Working

A Friday round 'em up of to what others up are:

2 Political Junkies on the Forbes' helpful advice to men: Don't Marry Career Women.

Gort42 on the those who depend on the generosity of strangers: Corporate Welfare.

Capital Ideas on Rendell quitting after this one last campaign . . . or maybe not: A Friday Quickie.

On the other hand . . . GrassrootsPA on Rendell setting sights on Washington after this last run at Harrisburg: Rendell Says He’s Open To Democratic White House Cabinet Post.

Lehigh Valley Ramblings focuses on Nothampton County Hogs.

PoliticsPhilly is shocked to find out that people playing, well, politics, with on-line polls: Poll Hijinks.

The Bob Casey Blog doesn't talk about keeping Romanelli out of the debates or off the ballot, and ducks the Keystone Poll, but does go ape over Santorum.

The Santorum Blog, on the other hand, covers Diane Irey; Santorum Haters; Romanelli; and the Keystone Poll.

Comments from Left Field has a new brew with a celebrity endorsement to tell us about.

Will Divide examines the really old band joining the old band at the WH and the WaPo lack of examination of the same.

Liam, on the other hand, examines the difference between "gay" and "smart". Stay until the end for the special show at the bottom.

Blue Wren searches for the answer and finds the answers we've been given a little more than merely wanting.

Jesus's General has the perfect tee vee show for Red America in his sights.

Finally, Carnival of the Liberals needs your posts.

I'm not working today, so I let these other hard-working folks do it for me. I guarantee (double 'yer money back) that any and all of these posts will be more than worth your time.

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