Whatever happened to the principled, conservative, smart Mike DeWine who first was elected senator from Ohio? As I noted in today’s web column, DeWine (who has been a disappointment on many levels) failed last year to give assurances that the judicial nomination of brilliant White House aide Brett Kavanaugh would be filibuster-proof by “Gang of 14” standards. Now, the Sulla Institute reports that at a campaign party last night in Ohio, DeWine appeared utterly clueless even about who Kavanaugh is, even though the Senate leadership has very publicly announced that Kavanaugh’s will be the next nomination pushed to a floor vote. But wait, it gets a little worse: Sulla’s “Lucius Cornelius” reported to me via e-mail that even after DeWine “nodded his head” when reminded that Kavanaugh was a judicial nominee, it appeared that “he probably still could not place the name.”

Maybe this utter cluelessness could also explain his office’s susceptibility to embarrassing staff problems of the sort memorialized by the (in)famous sex chronicler known as Washingtonienne. And it might help explain why he is in a fairly tough fight for re-election this year.