Meet Ed Markey, presently an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts and the front-running candidate in that state’s special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry’s move to become the U.S. Secretary of State:

The Daily Caller captured the key comment in Markey’s debate with Gabriel Gomez:

“It’s really not math. It’s just arithmetic. It’s very simple arithmetic. It’s not as complicated as math,” Markey said, answering a question about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which he opposes and Gomez supports.

With high-level thinking like that going on in Washington D.C., don’t look for the budget to be balanced any time soon, because that would involve arithmetic and, quite possibly, math. Which is perhaps too complicated for any mere political candidate for high office to bother with understanding.

Ed Morrissey extends the deep thinking on that topic here….