Monday night at a local Republican ward committee meeting at the Kona Bistro here, Schmidt responded to a friendly question about Iraq with the kind of simplistic comparison that even Dick Cheney’s speechwriters have long abandoned. “There is enormous potential there,” Schmidt began, “the kind of potential that we saw in 1776.” ~Walter Shapiro, Salon

You can’t make up stuff like that.  You could try, but it would never come off sounding as ridiculous as the genuine article.  The Salon article covers the OH-02 race’s twists and turns, giving prominent attention to Schmidt’s Murtha gaffe (where she effectively called him a coward but supposedly didn’t mean to) and her nuclear waste blunder.  It turns out that Schmidt isn’t a mean person at all.  She’s a nice person!  That’s great.  Perhaps Ohioans should relieve her of a job that requires her to be in the rought-and-tumble world of politics.