THIS COULD BE AMUSING

Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, suggested on Meet the Press yesterday that John McCain should pick Tom Ridge as his running mate. Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb has "heard from two different sources that Tom Ridge is at or near the top of the list to be VP."

Hey, bring it on. For most people, Ridge will always be associated with those risible color-coded terror alerts and his department's duct tape and plastic sheeting recommendations (curiously, since leaving government, he's joined the board of Home Depot). Ridge denied that terror alerts were politicized on his watch even as, during an election year, he proclaimed when dicussing alerts that "the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror" -- and then, after his resignation, he acknowledged that alert levels changed based on pressure from elsewhere in the administration. Yeah, this is a guy I think ofg when I think of the word "leadership."

On the other side of the coin, it would be fun to watch the wingnut reaction to Ridge, who spent more than a decade in Congress before becoming governor of Pennsylvania, and failed a lot of right-wing litmus tests:

Voted for funding for International Planned Parenthood, June 12, 1991....

Voted to allow abortions on overseas military bases, Oct. 3; 1992.

Voted against requiring parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period before minors could get abortions from groups receiving federal funds, March 25, 1993.

Voted for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), used to prosecute peaceful abortion protesters; May 5, 1994....

Said on June 14, 1996, of the Reagan pro-life Republican platform plank, "It would be my preference to take it out or modify the language to be more inclusive." ...

Voted for President Bush's budget resolution breaking his no-new-taxes pledge, Oct. 5; 1990....

Voted against an amendment forbidding the National Endowment for the Arts from funding obscene or blasphemous worlds; or those desecrating the American flag, Oct. 11, 1990.

Voted for the Equal Rights Amendment, Nov. 15, 1983....

Voted for the so-called assault weapons ban, May 5, 1994....

Voted for banning the testing of space-based weapons, May 23, 1984....

Voted for prohibiting aid to the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua, Oct. 22, 1983....

Voted against reinstating the exclusion of homosexuals from the U.S. military that had been lifted by President Clinton, Sept. 28, 1993.

More recently, he's come out in favor of what the anti-immigrant right calls "amnesty."

Abhorrent to the GOP base and unimpressive to everyone else? Please, John, go right ahead.