The Wreck of the Edward FitzGerald

Yeah. Hear that fizzing sound? That is the air rushing out of the balloon which was the Ed Fitzgerald for Governor campaign.

Excerpt:

We may never know exactly what happened between FitzGerald and a woman who was not his wife, at 4:30 in the morning, in the parking lot of an industrial complex in Westlake. What we do know is that women are far more likely to abandon FitzGerald over the issue than men. We also know that winning a huge majority of the female vote was FitzGerald’s only conceivable path to victory.

A Quinnipiac University poll released July 30 showed Kasich leading FitzGerald 53 to 31 percent among male voters, but only 43 to 41 percent among women. Take that same poll today and Kasich’s lead among women is probably at least eight percentage points.

As bad as that early-morning parking incident was for FitzGerald, things were about to get a whole lot worse. Reports that FitzGerald went 10 years without a valid permanent driver's license — including periods when he was county executive, Lakewood mayor and Lakewood safety director — fail the common-sense test in ways that boggle the mind.

"Ed FitzGerald went 10 years without a valid permanent driver's license." No, you didn't read that wrong. I thought I heard it wrong yesterday. Ten years? During which time he was Mayor of Lakewood and Cuyahoga Executive? His excuse for not renewing is that "things kept coming up." Really, his campaign said exactly that.

Meanwhile, Eddie is crying about the optics. "The question is whether the optics of it will trump reality."

Yeah, you guys just hate optics, don't you? Like when you took this photo... "Hey, looky, here's me with a hot blonde! I'm cool; vote for me!"

The Irish people involved are all twitchy:

In a statement, Grehan and Peter Hynes, a member of the 2012 Irish delegation, called the patrol stop an "innocuous incident."

"We are outraged and disgusted to find our names being drawn into what is clearly a controversy fabricated with political motivation," Grehan and Hynes said. "We confirm that there is absolutely no basis for the unfounded speculation and nasty innuendo which surrounds reporting of this incident."

So don't hang around garbage and you won't get any on you. I can't pretend I'm not elated to see a Pro-abortion "Catholic" being revealed for what he really is.