Calculated procrastination?

OHIO AUDITOR Mary Taylor, the lone Republican to survive the Democratic sweep of state offices in 2006, has the look of higher public office in her eyes these days.  Governor?  U.S. Senate? in 2010?   Other than mentioning that she's asked about her political future wherever she goes, she didn't quite respond in her appearance at the Akron Press Club luncheon Thursday.  And when smiling politicians don't discount "rumors,"  as she described them,  you can bet that they are more than rumors and that she will receive countless invitations to speak at high-powered Republican get-togethers in 2009.  Who else, after all,  is available to the state organization in the wake of the GOP slumber parties in Ohio in 2006 and 2008.  She will only say  that she can't predict  where she'll be "One, two, three years from now." Her county enabler and party chairman, Alex Arshinkoff, who attended the luncheon, resorted to the words of his former boss,  the late Ray Bliss,  when asked to define her coy words:  "Ray called it calculated procrastination."  Thank you.

Taylor was co-chairman, along with former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine,  of McCain's losing campaign  in Ohio.  But with that grim experience behind her, I remain puzzled by her remedy for the party's return to parity with the Democrats.   The party, she says, must return to its basic values of "tax relief and job opportunities."  Return?  It seems to me such  party insistence on its core values was cascading from the Republican  megaphones in 2006 and again in 2008 and no more effective than gossip.   Maybe it's  time to look for more imaginative ways to lure voters as the 21st Century races forward.  Except for the never- discouraged  GOP hard-liners, it couldn't hurt. .