Katherine Baker Knoll

I was as outraged as the rest of you at the comments of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Katherine Baker Knoll at a recent military funeral. But I can't help thinking that there is more here than meets the eye.

While Ms. Baker-Knoll has long had a reputation as a dim bulb, she also has all the right enemies. Ms. Baker-Knoll serves as the Democratic Lt. Governor in the Rendell administration. Leftists in Pennsylvania have been trying to marginalize Baker-Knoll since the beginning of the administration. She gives them plenty of ammunitiion (as we have seen with recent events), but that doesn't explain why the left hates her. The left usually rushes to join with idiots, lunatics and other assorted no-class jerks. But they are making an exception in this case.

The fact is, she is one of the few prominent Democrats anywhere that is pro-life. Had those statements been made by a more consistent leftist, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette would not have mentioned it.

I suspect that the publicity surrounding this event is part of a run-up to dumping Knoll from the ticket for next year's gubernatorial elections. Rendell's choice in the 2002 primary was a more liberal candidate, but Knoll won the primary because she was the only woman on the ballot in the Democratic primary. [That is a good example of gender-politics chickens coming home to roost.] Unlike some other states, in Pennsylvania the governor and lieutenant governor are nominated separately in the primary election.

Look for the Dems to trot out a new, more reliably leftist candidate next spring for Lt. Governor. Assuming that Rendell wins in the fall, that new candidate will then be groomed to replace Rendell or Arlen Specter in 2010.

I am not going to blog any more about Knoll because I don't want to help the Dems do their dirty work. Let them clean up their own house. Knoll will continue to give her opponents more ammunition and her opponents will continue to attack her using their friends at the Post-Gazette and other papers.

For all the anger I feel at this latest event, I feel much more outrage at Governor Rendell's attempt to prevent our soldiers' votes from counting during the Presidential election last fall. Incoherent rambling from an idiot is far less offensive than the denial of our soldiers' basic rights as citizens.