I posted the other day about the buzz about Florida Governor Charlie Crist being a possible running mate for John McCain and looked at Crist's past that more or less confirms that he's yet another closeted GOP politician. As David Fiderer at Huffington Post suggests, perhaps the buzz is merely a way to get free media coverage for the GOP in Florida while in reality, there is no way in Hell Crist could ever accept a VP nomination because then his somewhat open secret would be sooner or later discovered (not that I wouls not enjoy watching the process, especially if came out during the election campaign). Here are some highlights from Fiderer's column (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/does-the-media-advise-and_b_90014.html):
The GOP has this rule about anyone who aspires to national elected office. Nobody talks about it much these days. But 50 years ago it inspired both a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Advise and Consent, and a Broadway play, Gore Vidal's The Best Man. The rule is simple. Any serious question about a candidate's sexual orientation is an instant disqualifier. So ignore the phony buzz from Bob Novak and Dick Morris, who once wrote, "To stop Hillary, draft Condi"." John McCain will never pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate. Her status, as a 53-year-old never married woman, would invite reporters to start asking too many of the wrong questions.
Last April the Florida legislature changed the law to allow the current governor, Charlie Crist to run for president or vice president without resigning his job. Crist is enormously popular among Floridians, and any buzz about his joining the Republican ticket generates favorable free media in a crucial swing state. So it was inevitable that GOP operatives would plant phony stories, like the one in that showed up in Bob Novak's column and elsewhere touting Charlie Crist as McCain's possible running mate.
As if McCain's people never use the internet, where they would have stumbled onto a series of articles in New Times, of Broward-Palm Beach, Florida. They are titled, "Charlie Crist Is NOT Gay, And other things the Republican Party wants you to believe on Election Day," and "Crist Denies Trysts GOP frontrunner: I have never had sex with a man," and "Crist Denies Trysts II: Sworn testimony backs up claims that Bruce Jordan boasted of his affair with Charlie Crist." But the New York Post discredited those rumors last November, when it reported that Charlie Crist was dating Carole Rome, who was in the process getting a divorce from the owner of the Bluestar Jets. It must be serious; they've been together eight months, which is two months longer than Crist's first and only marriage, which ended in divorce in 1975 when Crist was 23.
Like John McCain, Charlie Crist is a traditional values kind of guy. During the 2006 campaign season, he told groups of voters, by way of targeted recorded phone calls, that, "I support a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriages, and I oppose adoption by gay couples." Crist has backtracked on the constitutional amendment issue; "I'm just a live and let live kind of guy," he now says. But not his party.
Florida Republicans have secured a place on November ballot for a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Of course, Florida Republicans don't want Crist to start campaigning for the amendment, for the same reason that House Republicans didn't want David Drier counting votes for H.J. Res. 88. You think Republican regulars don't recognize what's going on?
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