Will The Next Leader Of The Republican Party Be Gay Or Gayish?

A National Journal survey of bloggers I participate in weekly asked today to pick between 3 maladies facing the GOP and determine which is the most harmful to the Party of No. I picked the obstructionist thing but another choice was the GOP's lack of leadership. Despite Cheney's desperate claims to the contrary, the Republican Party has no national leaders-- unless you want to note that more and more of them are liking Obama. (I wonder if he's gaining Republican admirers as rapidly as he's losing progressives; for his sake, he'd better be.)

With a plague of scandals having removed John Ensign and Mark Sanford from any leadership pretensions, Inside-the-Beltway media is suggesting the GOP turn to one of their biggest untapped wells-- closet queens and, more specifically, closet queens from South Carolina. First a note about South Carolina closet queens in general: they're barely in the closet at all. I mean, it's almost-- not quite, but almost-- like Mark Foley (R-FL): everybody knows (except the suckers in the churches who turn out dutifully to vote for them). It's long been an open secret that effeminate Senator Lindsey Graham-- once publicly called "too light in the loafers to fill Strom Thurmond's seat"-- is the gayest blade in the U.S. Senate. On top of that, South Carolina's Lt. Governor, Andre Bauer, usually described as a confirmed bachelor, isn't fooling anyone and neither is the Palmetto State's Senate President Pro Tempore, Glenn McConnell, who will move up to Lt Governor when Bauer becomes governor after Sanford tangos off to Argentina in a few weeks. (Right now, the delusional, love-besotted Sanford, still babbling about King David and how the Devil made him do it, says staying on as Governor of South Carolina is part of God's plan.)

When Cheney announced his hopes for a Republican future during yesterday's Moonie Times' radio show, he didn't mention anyone from South Carolina-- or any known closet cases. He talked up Paul Ryan, a sad sack light-weight who passes for a GOP "thinker," Jon Huntsman, who fled to China rather than face the increasingly virulent attacks from his own party's far right, and Rob Portman, some detritus left over from the Bush Regime waging a hopelessly uphill battle for Ohio's open Senate seat. Chris Cillizza, on the other hand, thinks he may have found the new Republican leader: Lindsey Graham-- just like McCain... only very gay and ridiculously hypocritical. Is Cillizza making a funny? Nope; he was impressed with Lindsey's "inspired performance"-- his words-- on Meet the Press Sunday. Cillizza's explanation defines Village-ism:

EVERYBODY wears pink shirts in South Carolina, silly!

Graham, who spent the 2008 election cycle as Sen. John McCain's loyal sidekick, appeared alongside former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner in advance of 2012, and managed to stand out.

Why? Because unlike other Republicans who seem to be so fixated on scoring political points on President Obama, Graham was willing to point out where his own party had strayed while also making a reasonable argument for GOP ideals.

Asked about Gov. Mark Sanford's extramarital affair, Graham, who is close to the governor, said that he was "disappointed" in his friend's behavior and praised Obama as "one of the better role models in the entire country for the idea of being a good parent, a good father."

Of the two major legislative victories for Democrats so far this Congress-- the economic stimulus bill and the climate change measure-- Graham offered a criticism that acknowledged the mistakes his own party had made while subtly hanging the politics as usual label on Obama and Democrats.

"The stimulus package was Karl Rove politics; pick a few Republicans off, call it bipartisan," said Graham. "The climate change bill was Tom DeLay banging heads and twisting arms to get one vote more than you needed. So there's really been no change in Washington."

President Obama didn't invite Lindsey-- or any of the other GOP closet cases-- to his commemoration of Stonewall yesterday. If Obama is supposed to be so bipartisan why no Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or Patty McHenry or Adrian Smith or Dana Rohrabacher?