Garrison Keillor is just like Maureen Dowd & Arianna Huffington

...in that he's not one of my favorite performers or writers, but when he writes a good piece, he writes a good piece. He's written a good piece for the Baltimore Sun, in which he gives his opinions on why the Republicans have run aground.

As I say, it's a good piece. My only problem with it is a couple of times he makes clearly intended-to-be-ironic statements to which I reacted with all the hope of a young boy at Christmas.

As with:

I see by the papers that the Republicans want to make an issue of Nancy Pelosi in the congressional races this fall: Would you want a San Francisco woman to be speaker of the House?

Will the podium be repainted in lavender stripes with a disco ball overhead? Will she be borne into the chamber by male dancers with glistening torsos and wearing pink tutus?

Will she?

And then:

You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math.

To see them produce a ninny and then follow him loyally into the swamp for five years is disconcerting, like seeing the Rolling Stones take up lite jazz.

I wish.