After a discussion on the late night Eschaton-thread, well-regarded Eschaton commenter
Thersites has set up a
"Beat Rick" blog (that's
http://beat-santorum.blogspot.com) with the goal of centralizing efforts to send Man-on-Dog back home to, um, Virginia, or wherever he actually does live.
The rationale is simple and straightforward: (1) Santorum is one of the most noxious figures in the Senate and in politics in general; (2) Pennsylvania has gone blue in the last four presidential elections, elected a liberal Philadelphian as Governor, but cannot seem to elect a Democrat to the Senate to save its life; and (3) recent polls have shown likely Democratic candidate Bob Casey, Jr. (46-41), already ahead of Santorum and other candidates within striking distance.
As MrLiberal noted
here several days ago:
Santorum's seat hangs in the balance. The religious conservative won in 2000 against a weak Democratic candidate in Ron Klink with 52%, but his recent series of faux-pas and controversial episodes have left him vulnerable. While Keystoners give Santorum a 52% approval rating, they're less supportive of his reelection chances. For those two reasons, the Democrats, nationwide and statewide are gunning for Santorum. No Democrats has won a Senate seat for six years in Pennsylvania since Joseph Clark in 1962, but that could very well change this year.
Defeating Santorum in 2006 should be one of our central goals.
What the precise aims of this effort are are still up in the air; in fact, Thersites wants precisely this kind of input from the progressive blogosphere, and he especially wants to recruit Pennsylvanians for this work. Certainly raising funds for his challenger will be an eventual goal, but it would also be good to have a core of volunteers for other duties as well. Anyone interested please go to the blog and comment so that we can begin to get a sense of what kind of group we have together.
-- Stu