Day By Day

Monday, December 26, 2005

Pennsylvania Politics -- Santorum Cuts His Losses

I hate to admit it because I long considered him to be a lightweight, but Rickey Santorum is turning out to be perhaps the most perceptive and challenging thinker in the Senate since Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His book, It Takes a Family, is a much deeper and more complex treatment of a difficult subject than the Hillary tract to which it is often compared. I watched him being interviewed last night on C-Span and he's impressive -- articulate, in command of his facts and arguments, and clearly at comfortable with big idea thinking. I often disagree with the Senator, but I am coming to respect him.

Meanwhile on the campaign trail, the recent Dover School Board decision proved to be an embarrasment to Rickey. He had endorsed the efforts of the Thomas More Law Center to promote a debate over Intelligent Design and "Neo-Darwinism" on the grounds that both sides of the controversy should be presented. However, the Dover court case, in which the More Center participated, was such a debacle that Santorum found himself in an untenable position. He immediately withdrew his support from the Center, which may be a craven sacrifice of principles or just good politics. In either event it gave the Casey camp an opportunity to portray Santorum as a "flip-flopper." [read about it here]

Meanwhile, Bobby Casey is facing problems of his own. His strong pro-life position seems to have come as a surprise to some Democrat activists, who are now threatening to throw their support to one of his rivals for the Democrat nomination. This is probably just meaningless venting, but the pro-choice ideologues did severely damage Ron Klink's campaign against Santorum last time around, and they're just crazy enough to do the same to Casey this time.

Stay tuned....

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