I don’t know if it’s my Mythbusters hangover or the fact that I spent hours reading the over 100 emails I received over the weekend about Communist Hollywood, but my brain is a little slow this morning.

(“This morning?” you crack wisely, earning a sly wink back from your own reflection in the monitor.) So instead of thinking myself, I present to you the product of a much fresher, younger brain, that of e-mailer David, who sends along an interesting thesis about Rick Santorum and Hillary Clinton:

“I believe the Santorum/Casey race for PA Senate 2006 is shaping up to be a great model for 2008. More specifically, I think that the results of this Senate race, and the behavior of the party activists as well as the swing voters will shed some light on the eternal question of just exactly what would happen nationally in a race that pitted Hillary Clinton against a pro-choice Republican, like Rudy or Romney or Ehrlich or McCain (and yes, I know McCain’s pro-life, but pretty much everyone who votes on the abortion issue seems to think he’s pro-choice — must have something to do with calling Pat Robertson & Co. the “forces of evil” — ah well).

Anyway, here’s the analogy that I see. Hillary is to the US as Santorum is to Pennsylvania. Santorum is considered too conservative for PA. Hillary is thought to be too liberal for the US. Yet in spite of that, Santorum has won with 50% or more in PA, and Hillary is polling at 50% or better in some nat’l polls. Both have personalities that are thought to be liabilities. Both are larger than life. Both drive the base wild. Both are hated by the base of the other party.

Both have a political identity that is shaped by an aspect of their demographic identity (Hillary = woman = feminism; Santorum = Catholic = social conservatism). And finally, both are generally written off as being too wacky and abrasive for swing voters, and yet both have a certain unexplainable appeal to swing voters.

But wait! There’s more. Santorum’s 2006 opponent for the Senate seat will be Bob Casey, Jr, a moderate PA Democrat who unlike most of his party, is pro-life. Hillary’s likely opponents for the presidency in

2008 include guys like McCain, Rudy, and Romney, all of whom, unlike the bulk of their party, are either pro-choice or perceived as being wobbly on abortion. In both cases, these candidates are being eyed by the party establishment largely because they seem electable. And in both cases, there is the twin dynamic of the party base adamantly opposed to a candidate who deviates from the party line on abortion but also terrified of the election of the alternative.

What happens with Casey, then, will tell us a lot about what would happen with Rudy or McCain or Romney. Will the Democrat base donate time and money to Casey? Will they get on the ground and GOTV for him? Will fear and hatred of Santorum be enough of a motivating factor for them to overlook the abortion problem? And what will swing voters do?

If Casey does indeed beat Santorum, I think that helps put to rest the argument that the GOP nominee must have been 100% pro-life all his life in order to retain the party base and beat Hillary. Not that I have anything against pro-lifers, I just feel that today’s GOP base has unrealistic expectations on the issue. Ronald Reagan signed a pro-abortion law as California governor. Bush 41 was pro-choice until he became Reagan’s veep. Ford was pro-choice. Nixon probably was.

GWB is arguably the only true “pro-life” Republican president we’ve had, and even he admitted in 2000 that the country wasn’t about to enact the types of bans on abortion that many pro-life activists want.

The point is, most Republicans who have successfully won the presidency have mixed pasts on abortion. And now with our most attractive candidates, like Rudy, McCain, and Romney (and maybe some dark horses like Ehrlich), all exhibiting that same muddied past on abortion, it’s more important than ever to see if the respective party bases really have gone off the deep end on the issue and will refuse to lift a finger for an abortion apostate, even if the alternative is the election of what they perceive as a harbinger of apocalypse.

Santorum/Casey is an excellent case-study.”

ME: Sharks… the Comintern… Paul Jarrico. Hm? What? Oh, well, very good, David. Thoughts, anyone?