Post-Campaign Weirdness Syndrome

Okay, okay, I know it's a tense time for Pennsylvania's political leaders apres le deluge of Tuesday.

But, things are getting a little weird.

First, we have House Speaker John Perzel ringing up conservative blogger-activist Lowman S. Henry of Lincolnblog. com to tell him he is dead in this town (Harrisburg) and that he can hurt his career in the future.

The blogger's sin: calling for the Republican caucus to oust Perzel as speaker.

Read Henry's post here.

Next, we have Sen. Rick Santorum's wife calling the cops, saying some Democrats have been peeking into the windows of the Santorum home in Penn Hills and have discovered -- not to anyone's surprise -- that it is empty.

The Santorums live in Leesburg, Va. They maintain the Penn Hills house for residency purposes. They used to rent it out, but there is evidence the tenants have left.

Read what KDKA had to say here.

A Santorum spokesman accused Democrats of "stalking the house," which is weirder still.

Stalking an empty house?

Who knows, it may soon be a federal crime.

My colleague, Carrie Budoff, has a story on it in today's paper.

This is clearly an attempt by the Santorum campaign to immunize their candidate from what they know is a damaging message they expect to be exploited by the Casey camp -- that Santorum is an out-of-touch absentee, who has abandoned his roots to live in a mansion in Leesburg, Va.

How do they know it is effective? Because Santorum used the same message against Democratic Congressman Doug Walgren in his maiden run for public office and it worked.

Now, everytime the Casey camp raises the issues of residency, Santorum will counter that it is just a cheap attack on his wife and kids. And they even used thugs to stalk them!

It's nonsense, but it may be useful nonsense.