Stirrings of life for Republicans in Pa?

Just when we thought the Mitt Romney campaign was giving up on Pennsylvania, the Mitt man himself has scheduled a rally at the Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne for Friday morning.

Does it mean the campaign thinks the keystone state is winnable? Not much evidence of that at the moment. A bunch of new polls show Romney well behind Obama in Pennsylvania, and perhaps most important, there’s no sign the campaign is renewing TV ad buys in the state. As they say, follow the money.

Seems to me that once Romney scheduled a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, he needed to make a public appearance before moving on. To fly in and out without a public event would have been an embarrassment to state party officials trying to convince the media and their own faithful that the state is still in play.

And on that score, State Republican Chairman Rob Gleason recently promised that presidential advertising would soon return to the state, and it has, sort of. In a news release this morning, his committee unveiled the TV ad above attacking Obama.

The state committe won’t t answer some questions hard-boiled political analysts would ask – like when the ad begins running, in what markets, whether it’s on broadcast or cable TV, and most important, how big the ad buy will be. Still, there it is.

On another front, there is genuinely good news for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Smith. He’s come within striking distance of incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey in some polls (you see margins of 6-12 points), and the Washington Post has moved the state from the “solid Democratic” to the “leaning Democratic” column in its assessment of Senate races. Read about it here.

Casey and Smith are slugging it out in negative ads, with Casey calling Smith “tea party Tom,” and Smith calling Casey “senator zero.” Nice.

And it’s just not an election until Mumia Abu-Jamal makes it into a pail of slop being slung by some candidate or another.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is accusing Bucks County Democratic Congressional candidate Kathy Boockvar of ties to the convicted cop-killer. I think the connections are mighty weak, but read this item by our friend Colby Itkowitz and judge for yourself.