Dirty Pool

This fall the Green Party will field a candidate in Pennsylvania's Senate race. Senator Rick Santorum saw to that.

The Republican incumbent Santorum is badly trailing Democratic challenger Bob Casey in the polls. So he convinced a significant number of his wealthiest supporters to generously support the Greens' petition drive on behalf of Senate candidate Carl Romanelli.

According to stories in the Associated Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Romanelli has acknowledged that Republican contributors supplied most of the $100,000 he spent collecting the signatures he needed to qualify for the Nov. 7 ballot.

The doe-eyed Santorum innocently says he will welcome another candidate on the ballot, adding in a more sinister tone, "This is politics."

But a Casey spokesperson accused the Senator of "trying to steal the election."

So how should progressives respond to this blatantly underhanded divide-and-conquer tactic, characterized by at least one observer as "a Nader"? Do we bet the bankroll on the creaky old Democratic Party, accepting it warts and all, and keep hoping it will grow a spine? Or do we "vote our conscience," as the saying goes, and support the Green candidate, even though up to this point he's been in bed with the enemy?

IMHO, it depends on the Democratic candidate. And the Democratic candidate in this case, Mr. Casey, is less than useless.

According to the same AP story, "Romanelli...supports abortion rights, while both Santorum and Casey oppose them." Also, Casey refuses to endorse the necessity of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

If he's not pro-choice and doesn't recognize the necessity of leaving Iraq ASAP, what good is he? Pennsylvania might as well keep Santorum.

The lesser of two weevils is just a smaller and less obnoxious pest.

And on the agenda for 2007 is the breathless question of whether the Democratic Party will nominate something human. Or will we get Hillary?

At an absolute minimum, I would expect a viable Democratic candidate to support a) an unconditional pullout from Iraq; and b) a 60-billion dollar (15 percent) cut in the defense budget, and the re-allocation of that money to social, health, and educational programs.

If it fails to unite behind this or a similar platform in 2008, the Democratic Party will finally consign itself to what Leon Trotsky called "the dustbin of history."

And then we'll have to vote Green, or Peace and Freedom, or the New Social Democratic Party which doesn't exist yet, because there won't be anybody else.