Ohio RINOs

My friend and fellow SOB Alliance blogger, Tom Blumer, has an excellent column showing all the machinations going on with the Ohio Republican Party candidates.

In RINOs, RINOs everywhere, he takes a look at several states where the GOP party leaders are backing individuals who really don't represent the core Republican values, and its especially egregious in Ohio where Gang of 14 member Mike DeWine will probably be the endorsed candidate for Attorney General. (Blumer's updated article along with current links is posted here.) As Tom explains:

Until he decided he wanted to be Ohio’s next attorney general, (state GOP chairman) Kevin’s (DeWine) relative, former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine, was last seen being repudiated twice by Buckeye State voters in a 17-month span in 2005-2006. First, despite spending $1 million, his son Pat finished a distant fourth in a June 2005 GOP primary race to fill an open congressional seat. That thrashing was accurately seen as a proxy repudiation of Mike over his participation in the Gang of 14 and other conservative-betraying votes. After yet another vote in November 2005 to stop drilling for oil in Alaska and a 2006 GOP primary where two completely underfunded challengers blockaded by ORPINO nonetheless took 28% of the vote, Mike DeWine lost his U.S. Senate reelection race against far-left Cleveland-area Congressman Sherrod Brown by a stunning 12 points.

Second-cousin Kevin and the ORPINO gang decided that this awful track record justified clearing the AG field for Mike, even though DeWine’s primary opponent Dave Yost had already racked up a 5-0 record in December and January GOP county endorsement meetings and had earned an intense level of tea party and other grassroots enthusiasm.

Nobody seems to want to own up to what Kevin and ORPINO did next, but all of a sudden early this week Yost, whose campaign slogan was “A Prosecutor, Not a Politician,” decided that he wanted to run for state auditor instead. Not coincidentally, ORPINO was also unhappy with the not-beholden CPA who had just started his own auditor campaign after Kasich selected Taylor.

As Tom concludes:

"...I understand that there is serious thought being given to going the third-party route in certain of the down-ticket races. I suspect that similar third-party moves are under consideration in other states and in higher-profile races. ORPINO and its compadres in other states will only have themselves to blame if this comes about."

I agree!