Bob Casey's no prize pig, but I'd just as soon vote for a package of expired bacon as Rick Santorum.
Whether he's equating gayness with the love between a man and a dog, trying to sneak intelligent design into the flawed-enough-as-is No Child Left Behind act, or blaming the Catholic church's recent rash of boy-touching on "academic, political and cultural liberalism in America," Rick's been the Senatorial equivalent of a rapture-prophesizing street-corner nutjob for a dozen years now.
We Pennsylvanians -- especially now that all our football teams are pretty lousy -- shall have no greater thrill in the coming months than Tuesday, when we cast our ballots against Rick Santorum en masse.
Still, I reckon every Wilma Warmonger and Gary Gaybasher in the commonwealth will hoist the rocks under and cast their ballots for that handsome devil Santorum come Tuesday.
Bob Casey's not your man, and that's cool; though he, like Santorum, is a pro-life, pro-gun opponent of gay marriage, you've just got an itch only Rick can scratch.
Sure, he won't even deign to send his children to school in your state, but those chipmunk cheeks have melted your hearts.
Yeah, he hinted a week after Hurricane Katrina that he supported penalizing New Orleans residents who didn't heed the (insufficient and botched) warnings to evacuate the city before the storm, but he's a man of his convictions, no matter how boneheaded they are.
Fine, he tacked a highly dubious amendment on a Katrina-related victim-relief bill that gives a huge tax credit to manufacturers of an essentially useless synthetic fuel, but he seems like the kind of guy you'd drive to Leesburg, Virginia -- where Santorum, despite owning an unoccupied puppet-home in Penn Hills roughly one tenth the value of his Dixie manse, actually lives -- to have a mint julep with.
GOPers are going to lose a Senate seat tomorrow, and you'd better believe they're miffed about it.
If only they'd called me up a few months back, I might've been able to help them with this little peccadillo. Santorum's the pits, but here's my list of three candidates both you and I can agree would fare better than Rick:
3. Jonathan Taylor Thomas: I don't really know JTT's political leanings, and I'm still seeking a refund for Man of the House. But the former tween heartthrob always seemed to have a far more level head than either Brad or Mark, and he's actually lived in Pennsylvania in the last couple years. So, that's two things he's got over Santorum. Sure, you have to be 30 to hold a Senate seat, but if he could be The Lion King, he could certainly play five years older.
2. Allen Iverson: He and Rick - they're not so different: Rick Santorum might be grossed out by homosexuality (sometimes methinks the lady doth protest too much), but AI actually rapped about it in his unreleased 2002 track "40 Bars."
It's like I always say: if you've got to run a homophobe, I'd rather he be really good at basketball.
1. Raj Peter Bhakta: Unless you live in the 13th Congressional district, you've probably never heard of Raj Peter Bhakta, the Republican congressional candidate looking to unseat Democrat Allyson Schwartz tomorrow.
Nothing against Schwartz, but it's not as though Republicans like Bhakta -- who claims on his Web site to be both an environmentalist and an opponent of the kind of pork-barrel legislative tricks Santorum is well known for -- couldn't have stepped in for Rick and provided the party with a viable, not-insane candidate.
That, and the bowtie at every photo-op is quite fetching.
Given his record, why Republicans chose to go with Ragin' Rick instead of practically anyone else is beyond me. But tomorrow, when you draw the curtain in the polling booth, remind them that, at the very least, Pennsylvanians demand one thing out of their leaders: competence.
