Carl Paladino's Carefully Nurtured Crazy Act Is Working!

This proves, as pointed out succinctly in the Voice this week, that Paladino's crazy man act is just what the voters want -- baseball bat and all! As the Voice also reveals, the Paladino campaign will soon be distributing their own brand of bats, called "Paladino Albany Sluggers" so that fans of Buffalo Carl can have their very own.

Over at the Post, Fred Dicker -- whose own carefully nurtured Cuomo alliance could be badly jeopardized by this turn of events -- says the poll is all wet. He points out that pollsters didn't ask voters if they'd just as soon cast a ballot for Rick Lazio. The Republican favorite who was trounced by Paladino in his own party's primary this month is still on the Conservative Party line, so Dicker's right: He'd be likely to shave a few stalwart GOPers off of Paladino's total if given the chance.

But the notion that Paladino could be in striking distance of Cuomo in a one-on-one contest has to ratchet up the pressure on Lazio and Conservative Party leader Mike Long to throw in the towel.

After all, there are thousands of phony-baloney jobs at stake if Paladino can pull off an upset. No one knows this better than Long who won jobs for almost the entire family and Brooklyn Conservative Party executive board after he backed George Pataki for governor back in 1994. Long bit the bullet back then in spite of Pataki's pro-abortion positions, a stance that is supposed to be the ultimate heresy for the right-wing party.

So what's the problem now with backing a guy whose happiest moments are spent mass-mailing videos of horse-on-woman acts of bestiality? Paladino describes himself as a devout Catholic who opposes abortion under all circumstances, including rape and incest. "We have adoption agencies," he says. Whether or not such agencies are willing to handle any possible progeny resulting from Paladino's horse-human video is unclear.

Actually, the better Paladino does in the polls, the better for everyone involved. It gives a chance for investigative reporters to spend more time in Erie County, trying to duplicate the News' Greg Smith's magnificent story this week about how Paladino took a $1.4 million job-creating tax subsidy and managed to produce a single job -- and has been fighting the Paterson administration to keep from having to pay the money back. No wonder he's mad!