Green stealing Seinfeld's idea?

After reading this story on the Journal Sentinel's Politics Watch blog...

Madison -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green wanted to talk about veterans on Monday, and he didn't want to talk about much else.

In a Madison campaign stop touting his plan for veterans, Green refused to be pinned down on embryonic stem cell research, the conflict between Israel and Lebanon and what he would demand from Indian casinos if he were governor.

Green, a member of the U.S. House from Green Bay, voted against a measure that would allow federal research money to go to new stem cell lines. The Senate is expected to pass the measure today, and President Bush has promised to veto it.

Green supports Bush's policy of allowing money to go to lines created before August 2001 but not more recent ones, and he cast the debate on the issue in moral terms.

"I support stem cell research," Green said. "There are some lines we should not cross, however. I do not believe we should abandon our moral compass to pursue the tremendous promise that is medical research."

But he gave no explanation for why allowing funding for new lines would be immoral while funding for existing lines is OK.

Asked what the United States should do about the escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon, Green declined to say whether the United States should call for an immediate cease fire.

"Everybody wants a cease fire," he said. "The question is what the terms are. I mean, absolutely, believe me, peace is a good thing."

Pressed on what the U.S. should do, he said: "For me to speculate on something like that when the intelligence has not even been revealed or made public I think would be very inappropriate."

Green also repeated his criticism of the deals Gov. Jim Doyle reached in 2003 with Indian tribes that quadrupled the amount of money the state gets for allowing the tribes to operate casinos. Green said those agreements were not a good deal for taxpayers -- but he refused to say how much he thinks the state should be getting.

Asked, for instance, how much he thinks the Menominee tribe should be required to pay if it gets federal and state approval to build a casino in Kenosha, Green said: "There isn't even a concrete proposal, quite frankly, to talk about."

... one of The Xoff Files' army of correspondents asks:

If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, is this the campaign about nothing?