I'm excited that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan likes to chill out with a cocktail and a cigar as much as he likes "being a guy."
Except for the cigar and cocktail part, he and I have a lot in common – so much so that I sense potential for some bi-partisan male-bonding.
I mean, how great a distance is it, really, from being a manly "I like being a guy" kind of guy to "I like guys," period?
Alas, my gaydar is chronically unreliable. So I can't know for whom the definitively not-gay-married GOP hopeful might yearn in the solitude of his man-cave while he adjusts the Barcalounger, pours a Glenfiddich, lights a Cohiba and slips a Dean Martin LP on the turntable.
But at least I can be sure he doesn't spend the wee hours getting his nails done.
Perhaps because I live in bucolic South Jersey, I've never heard of -- much less, had -- a post-midnight mani-pedi like those enjoyed by Democratic Senate front-runner and Newark mayor Cory Booker.
Lonegan takes nearly as much umbrage at such unmanly nocturnal indulgences as to Booker's adroit refusal to label his sexual orientation in the Washington Post, whose recent story inspired the reveries and revelations about cigars, cocktails and liking-being-a-man.
Booker, the GOP challenger sighs, is "ambiguous."
Not so Lonegan, whose observations make excruciatingly clear the kind of man's man his party -- including, we are led to believe, Chris Christie -- imagines the men and women of New Jersey will send to the Senate.
--Kevin Riordan