When I read this article, I couldn’t help but think that these must be terrible times for Democrats. Here’s what supposedly passes as good news for Democrats:

GOP leaders would like to dismiss the refusal of the Ohio Republican Party’s screening committee to endorse former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine of Cedarville for attorney general as meaningless in the so-called big picture.

Maybe it is.

It also could be just the tip of an intraparty iceberg that has the potential to sink Republican hopes for a triumphant 2010 after miserable showings in 2008 and 2006. DeWine is vying for the GOP nomination for attorney general against Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost. Yost is running to DeWine’s right as the true conservative and the screening committee decided not to pick between the two of them.

The suggestion that there’s an “intraparty battle” that’s potent enough to split the Republican Party of Ohio is utter foolishness. The supposed split isn’t showing up in the Kasich vs. Strickland race. I wrote here that Scott Rasmussen’s latest polling has Kasich leading by 9 points. (Imagine how big his lead would be if there wasn’t this terrible intraparty split!!! SARC)

I thought that Mike Dewine would be Ohio’s next attorney general. When then finish counting the votes, he still might be. That Ohio’s screening committee hasn’t endorsed a candidate tells me that there’s a tightly contested race, nothing more.

Yost is appealing to the Tea Party movement and others who believe the party lost its way with DeWine and other pseudo-Republicans who cooperated too much with Democrats, didn’t hold the line on spending and generally forgot what they were supposed to stand for.

“We want smaller government. We want our government to support the free market rather than curb it,” said Rob Scott of Kettering, a Republican who worked for Ken Blackwell in the 2006 governor’s race and now is president of the Dayton Tea Party.

I don’t know what fiscal conservatism has to do with being attorney general. It’s certainly a plausible strategy for Yost to employ but it’s difficult to figure out why being a fiscal conservative makes Yost more qualified for being Ohio’s chief law enforcement officer.

Now Senate Republicans won’t even give Strickland the votes to fill a measly $851 million hole, measly when you’re talking billions of dollars, in the state budget.

The reason why Senate Republicans won’t “give Strickland the votes” is because, surprise, surprise, Strickland wants to eliminate the deficit by raising taxes. (Ain’t that a shocker?)

Strickland’s remedy to his failed economic plan, along with President Obama’s unpopularity, is pulling Republicans together, whether it’s in Ohio, Minnesota or other states.

I suspect that William Hershey’s writing has more to do with wishful thinking than with reality. That’s what it’s come to with Democrats.

Technorati: Dave Yost, Mike Dewine, Attorney General, Endorsement, TEA Parties, John Kasich, Republicans, Ted Strickland, Tax Increases, Democrats

Cross-posted at California Conservative