No seriously, I really and truly do.

Today, Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine will take a lot of crap from my colleagues on the right for engineering a candidate switch that will give his second cousin, Mike DeWine, a free pass through the primary for Attorney General.  At the same time, he will engineer a State Party endorsement of conservative Dave Yost, who was previously running for Attorney General, for Auditor of State.   Meanwhile, conservative CPA and state legislator Seth Morgan, who previously announced for State Auditor, will get the old party heave ho.  We've seen it before.  County Parties, State Central Committee Members, and other Republican officials will line up for Dave Yost and give Seth Morgan the back of the hand.

And its all too bad.  Both Dave Yost and Seth Morgan are principled conservatives that are willing to spend their time, their energy, and their resources to better this state.  But instead, they might possibly beat each other to death in a primary over the next few months.

Kevin DeWine will get all of the blame, but trust me, its not even close to being his fault. 

Mike DeWine is running for Attorney General and will win the primary no matter who opposes him.  It doesn't matter if Mike DeWine never raises a dime, he's personally wealthy enough to fund the whole shebang himself if needed.  And trust me, he most certainly will do so, if he feels it necessary.

More importantly, having Mike DeWine in charge of doling out special counsel contracts to lawyers around Ohio is very, very, very, very, very (did I say very?) important to both those lawyers and certain well funded county political parties that benefit.  Kevin DeWine faced the choice of either going along with this program or having a nominee that truly does go rogue.  The fact that the State Party has never endorsed Mike DeWine in this race, a former Congressman, Lt. Governor, and U.S. Senator, is clear proof that Kevin DeWine is not the grand puppet master of the Mike DeWine for AG campaign, as some would have you believe.

Then, we have the Dave Yost, Seth Morgan State Auditor issue mess.  Mary Taylor is the incumbent and was endorsed long ago by the Ohio Republican Party for re-election.  She then shocked Kevin and the entire Ohio Republican establishment by running for Lt. Governor with Kasich instead.

Kevin DeWine has been turned down by Mike DeWine, Josh Mandel, Betty Montgomery, Jim Petro, and who knows who else in an attempt to hold onto this apportionment board seat.  Finally, after many conversations, he persuaded Dave Yost to exit a race he couldn't win in order to run in a race that he could.  Of course, in the meantime Seth Morgan announced and began building a statewide team.

I like Seth Morgan as much as I like Dave Yost, but this is simply not Seth Morgan's year.  My friends can blame Kevin DeWine and Dave Yost for that fact until the cows bark at the moon, but in the end neither one them had much of a choice.

If you want to blame someone, my fellow conservatives, blame the one person that caused these dominoes to begin falling in the first place.  Blame the one person that does not personally give a hoot about the rest of the Ohio Republican ticket in 2010. 

Opportunism is defined as taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others.  And opportunism, thy name is surely John Kasich in 2010. 

The most ironic part of all of this is that once Kasich wins the Governor's office, his first priority will be booting Kevin DeWine out of his chair and replacing him with either Doug Preisse or Alex Arshinkoff.  And there won't be a darn thing anyone can do about it.