Salon has a very interesting article about one of my Senators – Mike DeWine. DeWine is facing a tough re-election this year against Sherrod Brown and it looks like he is trying to distance himself from the standard GOP talking points even more:

With his neatly combed brown hair, button-down white shirts, middle-aged slouch and soft-spoken manner, Mike DeWine has probably never inspired a TV booker for a Sunday morning talk show to shout excitedly, “We’ve got the senior Ohio Republican senator. He’s hot!” As local Democratic political strategist Greg Haas puts it with grudging respect, “Mike DeWine is Ohio — a little understated.”

So when I sat down with DeWine last Tuesday in suburban Worthington to talk about his tricky reelection battle against antiwar Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, I was not expecting fireworks. But the sky rockets went off as soon as the topic turned to embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“Rumsfeld has made some very serious mistakes,” DeWine declared, repeating his verdict for emphasis. “Very serious mistakes. I think history will judge him very harshly.” Just to make sure that I was really hearing one of the harshest attacks yet on Rumsfeld by a Republican senator, I asked, “Which mistakes?” DeWine, who has never repented his 2002 vote for the Iraq war, gave me a what-planet-are-you-on look before responding, “Clearly not enough troops going in [to Iraq]. That was the biggest mistake. And a lot of mistakes would be covered under that.”

The problem is that DeWine has blindly supported this administration through thick and thin until now. He even recommended making the NSA wiretaps legal. Now that there is a strong candidate that could remove him from office this Fall, he is scared shit-less. I wonder if Bush and the GOP will cut his support for saying such things?