DEWINE THROWS IN HIS LOT WITH THE EXTREMISTS AND BACKS SCALITO

I don't want to embarrass anyone so I'll bite my lip and refrain from using any names-- or at least one name. A few days ago I had a call from someone who is a NYC Democrat from birth but whose position has thrown him into a working relationship-- a successful and mutually beneficial one-- with George Voinovich. Voinovich isn't from the KKK or snake-handlers end of the GOP. He's just an old-fashioned greed-and-selfishness, corrupt-as-the-day-is-long conservative. (Keep in mind that the current sack of poo in Columbus, the execrable Robert Taft, takes most of the blame for Noe and the little enterprise that turned the state GOP into an effective criminal syndicate, but it was George Voinovich who was really Noe's boy, even more so than Taft, Ken Blackwell, Bob Ney, Betty Montgomery, Jim Petro and the other unindicted (so far) co-conspirators.) Anyway, Voinovich and his mini-me, Mike DeWine, usually try to walk the line between the GOP base, which craves out-and-out extremist maniacs, and Ohio's moderate independent voters. They almost always vote with Bush in the end, like all Republicans.

So a couple days ago Voinovich's pal calls me and, to make a long story short, tells me this crazy tale about how Voinovich is sick of the Bush Regime and how he wants to switch parties. "That's nice. What do you want from me?," I asked, nonplused. "Well can you put him in touch with Hillary Clinton? He'd like to run for vice president with her." The call didn't last too much longer and I didn't think about it again til I saw an article from the Associated Press a few minutes ago. No, Hillary didn't announce she's running with Voinovich. It's about Voinovich's mini-me.

DeWine is one of the Gang of 14 "moderates" who will make the final call on whether or not the Democrats can-- if they choose to-- successfully filibuster Scalito. He's up for re-election and looking very much like a walking deadman. WingNutia hates him for some infraction or other and moderates are suspicious of anyone who, like DeWine, was in bed with Noe and the uber-corrupt Ohio GOP machine. And the two Democrats running against him, Paul Hackett and Sherrod Brown, are both extremely good candidates, either of whom will probably wipe the floor with him. So... given what is given, not a few eternal optimists fantasized that between the 2 Mainers, Chafee, Spector and the two Ohio fellas, Scalito could be stopped. No dice.

After meeting with the radically ideological neo-fascist judge today DeWine called him "clearly within the mainstream of conservative thought" and added that it would be "hard for me to envision that anyone would think about filibustering this nominee." Here come da judge!-- a judge whose judicial record seems to indicate that he will be the most radically right-wing Supreme Court judge in history, further to the right than Rehnquist, further to the right than Thomas, even further to the right than the abominable Scalia"!

But this highly divisive nomination of an extremist right-wing judge is exactly what Rove felt BushCo needed to do. It proves beyond a reasonable doubt-- if anyone still had one-- that Bush is the worst poison America has served itself up since the Civil War.