Cornyn Endorses Crist In Florida But Too Scared Of Blunt's Corruption To Back Him For Missouri Seat

Is John Cornyn now a champion of gay outreach?

Both Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Kit Bond (R-MO), a pair of undistinguished right-wing hacks and rubber stamps, have had it with being part of the Senate minority. Each announced he would be retiring after the current session. And each represents a swing state leaning towards the Democrats and away from the disintegrating GOP. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is overwhelmingly favored to win the Missouri Senate seat regardless of which far right fringe loon the Republicans put forward and as you can see from this St Petersburg Times straw poll from today, progressive Democratic state Senator Dan Gelber is polling better than Republicans Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio + corrupt Democratic shill Kendrick Meek combined:

John Cornyn and Orrin Hatch, chair and vice-chair of the NRSC are so nervous that the Senate Republican caucus could wind up with an impotent 35 members (which is what will happen if they pick up no seats and lose in Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Missouri and Florida) that they took the unprecedented step today of kicking a young right-wing up-and-comer and fave of the nutroots, Marco Rubio, to the curb while endorsing-- in a rare GOP example of gay outreach?-- a relatively moderate Republican with a very spotty record. (Crazed right-wing bloggers are up in arms and demanding Cornyn resign.)

Crist's endorsement has sparked speculation about how close Roy Blunt is to being indicted for his notorious K-Street/Tom DeLay corruption. There is panic in the Missouri GOP that the NRSC folks are refusing to endorse a former Republican congressional leader in a tough primary against former state treasurer Sarah Steelman, another right-wing fanatic (like Rubio).

Meanwhile the éminence grise of Missouri Republican politics, John Danforth, has teamed up with Swiftboat financier, Sam Fox, to recruit someone they feel is more mainstream than either Blunt or Steelman-- a former Bush Regime functionary named Thomas Schweich, who started off as an expert of violent cults and later wound up representing Bush in Kabul as a special ambassador in charge of narcotics. A Bush holdover, he's currently a special representative for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Missouri has an awful lot of meth labs but he should probably run for governor instead of senator if he wants to use his expertise to solve that one.

Blunt is pissing in his pants because Sarah Steelman's comments about him enriching himself at the public trough portends a primary that will expose one of the worst records of corruption in the history of contemporary congressional politics. The non-endorsement by Cornyn-- coupled with the Crist endorsement in Florida-- is seen as a huge slap in the face to the party's far right and to especially to Blunt, whose contributions have been pretty moribund lately as word has leaked out that the national Republican establishment has no faith in his ability to win statewide office.


UPDATE: Response From Florida

I've been barraged with e-mails from Florida today. One tireless Democratic activist wrote this:

I've been talking to some prominent Democratic operatives and quite a few are so disappointed with Meek that they're seriously considering helping Crist if it came down to a choice between those two. Their reasoning goes something Iike "at least when we disagree with Crist it's because he's a Republican."

More humorous was this from someone who has a twitter account:

RedState's Erickson is already hinting about "salacious stuff" re: Crist on twitter:

http://twitter.com/ewerickson/statuses/1773542078

NRSC Endorses Crist. That will blow up in their face big time when the salacious stuff comes out.
about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
ewerickson