Testy, Testy

Wow. Anyone who hasn’t seen this Jean Schmidt interview with David Gregory over at Crooks and Liars needs to check it out.

Let’s just say that if the election turns on which candidate has the most winning personality, Hackett should win in a lanslide. Yikes.

Update: I hope the canvassers are armed with this information as they spread the word this week-end. It may be too late to make much of it, which is too bad. it would be a nice test case of the new libertarian red state Dem vs the religious extremist red state Republican paradigm:

…here’s one fact her side is carefully guarding, knowing only about 10 percent of those registered will vote Tuesday: her extreme views. If voters from places like Mariemont, Anderson Township or Hyde Park knew fully what Schmidt believed, they might sit out the election or switch over for once to a Democrat, especially one like Hackett.

Here’s the backup. During the campaign Schmidt is on leave as president of the Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati. Now, no one should begrudge her that commitment. It’s personal and religious. But does that commitment affect her political judgment and fitness? Second District voters must decide that.

But go to her group’s Web site, www.affirminglife.org/ index.asp, and click around through the many buttons and pages and you’ll learn she and her cohorts abhor living wills. Huh? Isn’t that the one lesson from the Republican exploitation of Terri Schiavo — that we should immediately get willed up? She says no.

Her local Right to Life site to this day says Schiavo was executed. And that you shouldn’t buy Levi jeans or anything Microsoft or Johnson & Johnson baby cream or read The New York Times. And they say no to the promise of embryonic stem cell research that could help our relatives and friends survive diseases and crippling paralysis.

Flat out, Schmidt is a political extremist. Of course, she thinks those fringe views put her in the 2nd District mainstream. I don’t think so, not with the suburban masses or even the man farming a rural field while his wife packs lunches for the kids waiting for their long school bus ride.

No doubt Schmidt will turn out her Right to Life friends on Tuesday. They believe their numbers will be enough for at least a victory.

But the more mainstream voters come to realize she’s a friend of Taft’s and the leader of such a fringe group, they might conclude she’s not Rob Portman, she’s not like them. And putting in a Democrat, especially one who still wears the Marine uniform and has economic success but with colorful, earthy edges, could be the more comfortable choice.

It all comes down to what people know, when they know it and whether they’ll care. We’ll soon know.

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