OK -- this is a cheap shot, but I can't resist:

First Daughter Barbara Bush's dirty-dancing partner has been hot-footing it from the law.

Gotham gadabout Fabian Basabe - pictured in a hip-lock with Babs on the front page of the Daily News yesterday - is wanted on three warrants in California.

The social climber has been busted for speeding, driving under the influence and trespassing. He even jumped bail in one case, court records show.

Other court files show a string of infractions - but no open warrants - in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, including two collisions.

... His first warrant dates back to an Oct. 22, 1999, bust for driving more than 100 mph and without a license in Riverside, a city in Southern California.

...Three months later, Basabe was nabbed for trespassing on the Malibu campus of Pepperdine University at 6:30 a.m. and driving with a suspended license....

...On May 21, 2000, he was stopped for driving under the influence at the wheel of a friend's 1996 Volkswagen Jetta....

I guess she's looking for a guy like Dad.

Oh, and while I'm here in the gutter, I see that TBogg has linked this report on the evening Babs spent with Basabe ("Commenting on the trays of margaritas and Veuve Clicquot champagne delivered to Bush's table before her gutsy performance, one wag quipped, 'I hope the Secret Service is driving her home'").

******

OK, I know: a lot of you think this stuff ought to be be off limits.

I understand. I'd rather it stayd off limits too. But you know what? For years, Republicans have been attacking the character not only of Democratic politicians but of everyone who isn't a God-fearing Republican conservative. Here's Newt Gingrich back in the '90s:

"Woody Allen having non-incest with a non-daughter to whom he was a non-father because they were a non-family fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

And here's Gingrich talking about child-killer Susan Smith:

"I think the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican. Thats the message for the last three days."

(Smith's stepfather, of course, was a prominent South Carolina Republican and Christian Coalition member who molested her.)

And Republicans talk a hell of a lot about "the family." They don't think you can be a good person, or a good parent, if you don't accept their definition of family and if you don't raise your kids the way they do. And the flip side of that is the implication that if you do what they do, you are automatically a good person and your family is automatically a good family. A weird result of this is what Paul Krugman alluded to yesterday -- the fact that George W. Bush is seen as a man of "character" and "integrity, " as a good, decent man, no matter how dishonest or reckless or irresponsible or mean-spirited or rude he is. It's as if a large percentage of the country agrees with Pat Robertson's assertion about Bush: "It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him.''

If there's going to be a gutter GOP campaign that paints not only the Democratic nominee but all Democrats as moral decadents and threats to "the family," then at some point it really might not be out of line to talk about just what kind of family George and Laura Bush have.

(First link via INTL News.)