Charlie Crist's Bright Shiny Object

Ex-GOP operative Jason Wetherington admitted having sex with Crist

Is the fight between the far right plus nutroots extremists and the Establishment Republicans of the NRSC and the Florida Republican Party over the Charlie Crist/Marco Rubio Senate nomination just a ruse to keep the media from talking about Crist's closet problem? With the release of Outrage, which exposes Crist's hypocrisy on gay issues while he himself was seducing young gay men, it was important to the GOP to point the media in another direction-- any other direction.

So Republican extremists and John Cornyn's NRSC are engaged in a noisy, very flashy topless mud wrestling match about who's further to the right, the Republican Governor who Inside the Beltway Repugs felt is their only shot of holding onto the Florida Senate seat, or the fanatic Bush-clone ex-Speaker of Florida's lower house who's stuck with a job.

Before Crist agreed to jump into the Senate race, he demanded that the Florida Republican Party and the NRSC back him and do their best to discourage a primary. Mainstream conservatives in Florida are delighted with Crist and smell victory but the extremists are apoplectic because, as governor, he's veered away from the kind of obstructionism irresponsible members of Congress and Hate Talk radio hosts can easily get away with. The nutroots campaign is calling on the far right of the GOP to stop donating to the NRSC until they withdraw their Crist endorsement. Michael Steele and the NRC have already declared neutrality.

Although polls show that Crist would win a general election and that Rubio would be soundly defeated, inside the crazed little GOP whites only pup tent, Rubio is starting to make ferocious headway-- even before playing the gay hypocrite card against Crist. Yesterday an editorial in the Tallahassee Democrat summed up why Crist's support inside the Republican Party has started evaporating. There is, for one thing, a genuine dislike for the Inside-the-Beltway Establishment trying to dictate to local Republicans.

Take Gov. Charlie Crist's announcement last week that he was seeking the Senate seat being vacated by fellow Republican Mel Martinez. Within hours, the Republican establishment in Washington-- desperate to save its dwindling number of Senate seats-- threw its support behind him.

That puts Crist in position to reap tons of campaign cash, tap into the party's other resources and improve his chances for victory.

The only problem is that former GOP Speaker of the Florida House Marco Rubio is also running. While Rubio has given no indication of pulling out, it's doubtful other Republicans will jump in.

The more candidates in a race-- and the more level the playing field-- the better.

A large field ignites the strong debates necessary for a healthy democracy to thrive, especially with the serious problems the country is facing. Strong-arm tactics to freeze out candidates are a disservice to voters and the cause of good government, and increase public cynicism.

Ironically, the national GOP's decision to back Crist could cause blow-back.

Many Republicans dislike Crist's moderate policies and may flock to Rubio, who is billing himself as the true conservative.

That could make for the tough primary that Republican leaders in Washington want to avoid, but give GOP voters what they should have:

A wide-open contest with the best candidate winning.

Sounds lovely but this is one fairy tale with only one winner: the Democrats. On the other hand, it is keeping the media's mind off Crist's closet and away from Crist's ex-honey, Jason Wetherington, whose Facebook page lists Michelle Obama, Howard Dean, Alex Sink and Robert Wexler as his favorite political figures. On the other hand there have always been and will always be people who deny men-we-know have sex with each other-- or who manage to find ways to punish them when it just cannot be denied. It's always awful when these "people," the deniers and punishers, are, like Crist, gay themselves-- and looking to protect their own asses by screwing someone else's. That's ugly. And that's why Charlie Crist is a Republican and why he doesn't deserve to be a public servant.

Ironically, the Republican Party can't even get any credit in the diversity arena from Crist's LGBT status, just denunciations of his hypocrisy. The GOP got beaten up in today's Miami Herald for being out of touch with Florida's demographic changes.

At a time when the Florida electorate is growing increasingly diverse, the Republican party is gearing up to field an all-male, all-white slate in 2010.

...The Republican front-runners for statewide office include Gov. Charlie Crist for Senate, Attorney General Bill McCollum for governor, Senate President Jeff Atwater for chief financial officer and U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam for agriculture commissioner. Putnam is the only one of the GOP candidates under 50 years old.

It's hilarious that the Herald, well aware that Crist is a closeted homosexual, refuses to mention it in a story about diversity-- any more than they'd mention that Adam Putnam is red-headed or a millionaire. And yet Florida is one of the "gayest" states in America. Not counting closet cases, like Crist, Florida has the second biggest gay population in the country, 609,219 (4.6%), less gay than California (5.2%) but gayer than New York (4.2%). Miami-Dade has the biggest percentage of gay people of any consolidated metropolitan area in the country (4.7%), even bigger than the San Francisco Bay area, and both Tampa and Orlando are among the two-dozen gayest metro areas in the U.S. Asked about the potential lack of diversity in the Republican slate, Crist said, ''I think people ought to elect whoever they want.'' Of the Republican party in Florida, he said, "Well, I love it. It looks like it's doing incredibly well to me.''

Meanwhile Republicans are desperate to drive Marco Rubio out of the Senate race and they think by persuading him to run for Lt. Gov. under McCollum they can kill two birds with one stone-- make the ticket look less lilly white and give the old (gay) white guy a clear shot at the Senate seat without a bloody, divisive primary. One Republican operative, Ana Navarro, whose job is to lure Hispanics into voting for the GOP, thinks Republicans will regain the political momentum in Florida. ''The next election is not going to be about change,'' said Navarro, who has already written McCollum a check. "This is going to be about experience and qualifications, given the dire economic straits that Florida is in right now. It's going to be about policy, not personality.''