Will Rubio Drive Crist So far Right In The Primary That He Loses To Meek In The General?

Courtesy of Free Republic

Every time right wing extremist Marco Rubio wins another Republican Party straw poll, Charlie Crist is forced further away from the political mainstream. At the rate things are going the moderate Republican Florida Governor will be running around in a white sheet and hood before the campaign is over! This morning he was railing against Barack Obama-- someone he once saw as a partner in helping fix Florida's festering economic problems (among the very worst in the U.S.)-- and regurgitating last week's Republican talking points that Obama is Jimmy Carter and would only serve one term.

The problem for Crist isn't Jimmy Carter... or even Obama; it's Marco Rubio, a young, straight arrow, Glenn Beck kind of Republican, darling of the extremists and teabaggers nationwide and beloved of Republican Party activists in Florida. So beloved of party activists, in fact, that he's beaten the Republican governor in every single official GOP straw poll this year-- and it has never been close. Rubio keeps winning landslides against the NRSC-recruited and endorsed "front-runner." This week it was Marion County in North Central Florida, an economically hard-pressed rural area of rolling hills. When the Republican Party County Executive Committee met last week, they gave Crist another severe thumping. Rubio won Marion County's straw poll 40-8 with 4 abstentions. And that wasn't even Crist's worst performance! Here's the list of county executive committees that have voted so far.

Hernando County- Rubio 46, Crist 0
Gilchrist County- Rubio 11, Crist 1
Jefferson County- Rubio 30, Crist 6
Highlands County- Rubio 75, Crist 1
Pasco County- Rubio 73, Crist 9
Lee County- Rubio 60, Crist 9
Bay County- Rubio 23, Crist 2

College clubs and women's clubs are giving the same lopsided margins of victory to Rubio. It's an unprecedented and stunning slap in the face to Florida's highest ranking elected Republican. The coterie of establishment politicians and crooked lobbyists who make up his inner circle dismiss the executive committees as a bunch of lunatic fringe teabaggers out of touch with real voters. The executive committees claim it is Crist and his circle who are out of touch. This morning in his Washington Post column conservative scold George Will came down firmly on the side of Rubio's interpretation of what's going on among Florida Republicans. He predicts that Rubio will "probably win."

Crist appeared at a rally with Barack Obama promoting the $787 billion stimulus that got no votes from House Republicans and only three from Republican senators. He is a climate-change worrywart who wants to cap Florida's carbon emissions. He has chosen his former campaign manager to serve as a placeholder in the Senate during the crucial next 16 months.

And to reduce property insurance costs, especially for Floridians living near the nation's second-longest coastline, Crist expanded, and vetoed reform of, the state's reckless version of a property insurance "public option." It is government-run insurance that, by offering rates lower than rational assessments of risk would dictate, has driven private insurers to limit their business or even stop doing business in the state. When a huge hurricane hits, Florida-- and U.S.-- taxpayers might have to foot the bill, by which time Crist plans to be in Washington.

Rubio, who is 38 and in a decade might look that old, says that Crist will not be there. Crist, says Rubio, "never thought he'd have to run in a Republican primary again." Probably only about 20 percent of Florida's 4 million registered Republicans will vote in the closed primary in late August in a nonpresidential year. So, about 450,000 votes might win it. That many can come from Republicans who are attentive to politics even in late summer because they are ideologically driven.

As is Rubio, which is why National Review, the bimonthly encyclical of the church of conservatism, had him on a recent cover and why the Club for Growth, a group that contributes to Republicans friendly to free markets, should support him. Crist has a large lead in name recognition, and hence in polls. But where Rubio and he are both known, they are neck and neck.

While Republicans argue among themselves about who is best equipped to maintain the status quo and stand in the way of economic and social progress for ordinary working families, Floridians continue to sink into a swampy morass caused by years and years of Republican policies on both the national and state level. While the Bush Brothers ruled in Tallahassee and in DC, "the number of uninsured in Florida has increased from 2.8 million in 2001 to 3.6 million in 2008. The percent of non-elderly adults without insurance increased from 22 % to 26.3%. And of the 10 worst hit congressional districts in the U.S. in terms of home foreclosures, 6 are in Florida, including the worst of all, FL-14 (Connie Mack's district), where 116,979 are projected for foreclosure over the next 4 years. The third worst district in the U.S. is represented by lunatic fringe Republican Tom Rooney (FL-16) where the 4-year forecast predicts 85,003 foreclosures. All of these Republicans have one thing in common; they adamantly oppose government assistance for families in need and are basically unconcerned about predatory corporate practices that are driving hardworking families into financial insolvency.

Last year McCain only managed to take 48% of Florida votes against Barack Obama. And among the counties that McCain did win were all but one of the counties (Jefferson) where Rubio has trounced Crist. Florida Democrats are counting on crazy Republican extremists saddling their party with a kook like Rubio so that their own very weak candidate, Kendrick Meek, can slip into the Senate seat. Unless someone comes up with the pictures, Meek could never beat Crist, but moderate Floridians are unlikely to ever vote for a teabagging extremist like Rubio despite Meek's ethical shortcomings and well-earned reputation as a lightweight shill. Meanwhile Crist has absolutely refused to debate Rubio; I bet even a second place finish in a debate would be better for him than what HBO is about to serve up-- Outrage a film that exposes Crist's hypocrisy as an anti-gay practicing homosexual closet queen-- available all over Florida-- in English and Spanish-- for the month of October:

Maybe it's not that mysterious why the upper ranks of the GOP and the Far Right are overflowing with homophobic closet cases

Miss Mitch and Lucky Lindsey wonder (or maybe just
make us wonder): Are there straight male Republicans?

"[Filmmaker Kirby] Dick argues that the political closet has grown more oppressive in recent years, largely thanks to the Republican Party's fervent embrace of anti-gay policies, which has sent lesbian and gay conservatives scurrying for cover."

-- Andrew O'Hehir, in a Salon.com column,
"Behind Washington's closet door"

by Ken

I'm always impressed as well as grateful when someone can make sense for me of apparently irreconcilable phenomena. Often once the connection has been made it seems obvious, even blindingly so, but that doesn't make me any less grateful for the help in making the connection.

It happened again when I read Howie's Thursday night post, "Conservative Gay Lawmakers Rejecting a Degrading Life in the Closet" (referring, alas, not to American conservatives but to British Conservatives), and followed the two Salon.com links he provided in the last paragraph. Not that Howie doesn't always provide us with valuable links, but these two struck me as especially valuable.

There was, first, the interview with writer James Hannaham, conducted during the book tour for his first novel, God Says No, about salaciously sinful life in the deep closet of the hard-core Christian Deep South. And then there was the one Howie described as "an even more direct must-read," indie-film columnist Andrew O'Hehir's "Behind Washington's closed door," about (and including an interview with) Outrage filmmaker Kirby Dick.

Is there anyone within shouting distance who hasn't been serially confounded, even dumbfoundewd, by the ever-growing number of homophobic closet cases crawling, or more often being smoked, out of the woodwork of the leadership of America's Far Right and Republican Party (functionally the same things these days)? As Howie has been noting, in places like South Carolina, it's enough to make a person wonder if there are any straight male Republicans. Well, Dick and O'Hehir have an answer, and again, obvious as it seems once it's been laid out, it's a connection I didn't make.

I'm also grateful to Howie for trying to pin down the meaning, or rather meanings, of being "in the closet," which are a whole lot more various than most of us tend to assume. And here I need to backtrack a bit.

It should go without saying that Howie has always been more 'in the know" than I have -- and for us "always" dates back to about 1961. But going back just a number of years (don't ask me how many years; at a certain age your sense of time goes all out of whacks, and things that happened maybe 30 years ago feel like "a few years ago," while more recent events could have taken place anywhere between two and 20 years ago), it used to drive me crazy when Howie would write or tell me that "everybody knew" so-and-so (fill in the name of a closeted public figure) was gay when I sure didn't. I didn't know much about much of anybody who was gay. Liberace, OK, but J. Edgar Hoover? (Bad example, perhaps -- in so many ways.)

The real eye-opener for me, and I can still hardly recommend the book highly enough, was Mike Signorile's Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power, which has what were for me fog-lifting treatments of three related but quite different power closets in American life: in the New York-centric media, the D.C.-centric federal government, and the Hollywood-centric entertainment industry.

It was from Signorile that I came to understand the phenomenon of "everybody knows"-type closets. Within their worlds, he explains, everybody does know, and the filthy preverts are free to practice their vile preversions -- as long as they do so discreetly and never, ever rock the boat. "Keep the faith," as it were, meaning the faith of rigid social orthodoxy, and they will never be outed.

And for many gays, especially of the older generations, the deal worked fine, because they were so thoroughly filled with internalized homophobia -- another subject about which I learned worlds from Mike Signorile -- that by and large they believed as strongly as their oppressors that their homosexuality is a disgusting, degrading preversion, for which they should feel the deepest shame. This is the internalizing of all those screamingly hateful voices we grow up with.

And it's the internalized homopobia, Signorile helped me to understand, that has kept so many gay folk imprisoned in their closets. To which, by the way, James Hannaham adds a fabulous insight in the Salon.com interview: that for many of the afflicted, the shamefulness and sordidness themselves become erotic turn-ons. And so it has been that in those "closets of power" the homophobic enforcers and their internalized-homophobic closet-case victims coexisted in mutually assured harmony.

Which doesn't mean that there weren't still more deeply closeted gays in the ranks of the Right, and in particular Far Right. Adding Hannaham's insight we can see that far from being stymied by the shamefulness of it, the shamefulness added to the thrill of the hunt. It may be that not even the homo-hating homos really understood how far from alone they were, and are.

My favorite example came from David Brock's invaluable memoir Blinded by the Right, in which he recalled his dual "coming out": his awakening from his former existence as a hard-core -- the hardest of the hard -- Far Right-wing attack "journalist" (see note below* on the use of quotation marks around "journalist") and the outing of what he thought was the darkest and terriblest of all possible dark and terrible secrets: that he's gay. In this case, clearly, by "being gay" we mean not the "everybody knows" kind, but the "I'll die if anybody finds out" kind.

Which doesn't mean, by the way, that Brock's secret was necessarily totally, impenetrably secret. Remember, since he was reasonably discreet about his preversion and publicly preached the full gospel of the Wacko Homo-Hating Right, he would in any case have been protected by the Don't Tell, Don't Complain compact.

Inevitably, though, there came a time -- by amazing coincidence the very same time that Brock was finding himself slipping out of the Wacko Right belief set he had so long sworn by (and made such a handsome living by) -- when he was made aware that his secret not only wasn't secret but was about to be made very public. He's vivid in his description of his terror. Outing meant certain ostracism by all the good Far Right folk who had been his community, his mainstay and nurturers. The revelation that he was this secret monster would mean the end of everything.

That's not quite what happened, though, when he walked the plank and outed himself. He found all those hideous creeps he had expected to scorn him hitting on him! (Well, I mean, have you seen pictures of the guy back then? The phrase "to die for" leaps to mind.)

Now if someone as deeply entrenched in the bosom of the virulently, violently homophobic Far Right had no clue, it's hardly likely that the rest of us should be clued in. And while we still need a proper psychological understanding of the kinship between self-hating homosexuality and far-right-wing politics (the affinity can't be accidental, can it?), the above-noted insight provided by Andrew O'Hehir in collaboration with Outrage filmmaker Kirby Dick does, I think, explain why, at a time when so many LGBT people, now able to accept the naturalness of our various sexual attractions (bye-bye, internatlized homophobia!), have left the closet behind, on the oppressive Far Right the closet-builders can barely keep up with the demand for new, even more heavily fortified models.

As I said, it sounds ridiculously simple once you've heard it, but then, so did the whole concept of gravity once the famous apple-plunking opened Sir Isaac Newton's eyes:

Dick argues, in fact, that the political closet has grown more oppressive in recent years, largely thanks to the Republican Party's fervent embrace of anti-gay policies, which has sent lesbian and gay conservatives scurrying for cover. He agrees that politicians, whether gay or straight, out or closeted, are entitled to some degree of personal privacy. A politician who is cheating on his wife with a man is not inherently more newsworthy than one cheating with a woman. But a politician who is voting for a rabidly anti-gay agenda while seeking out anonymous gay sex partners in bathrooms, in his view, is a dangerous hypocrite and very likely a disordered personality. In voting against his own natural interests, that politician is directly damaging gays and lesbians, and depriving the entire country of an honest debate about policies and attitudes on homosexuality.

*Note on the need for quotation marks around "journalist" as applied to practitioners on the Far Right: As I've written numerous times, the single most important revelation in Blinded by the Right is David Brock's discovery that what right-wing "journalists" practice has nothing to do with actual journalism, that he and his colleagues approached every story with all elements predetermined by their rigid ideological gridwork. "Reporting" then consisted of finding stuff with which to embellish this invented "truth": facts if possible, but factoids would be just as good, and ditto hearsay, lies, and on-the-spot totally made-up stuff.

#

Charlie Crist Doesn't Come Out As he Announces He's Running For The U.S. Senate

Incredibly, even the NY Times seems afraid to mention anything about Crist's homosexuality and how awkward his anti-gay positions are for someone who's left a trail of young male lovers from Tallahassee to South Beach and back. In a substantial analysis of his senatorial campaign announcement-- and, despite the release of Outrage-- not a word about the issue. Instead, most of the piece is reprinted pabulum from Crist's p.r. office and other news sources. Even more incredibly, the Orlando Sentinel, a paper that is well aware of the disconnect between Crist's sexuality and his homophobic public stances, goes on and on about how he could be a presidential candidate and never mentions anything about him being gay... just like almost all the other papers reporting on Crist's announcement today.

Meanwhile Politico reports that Florida's radical right won't back him while the NRSC tries to scare the radical right's candidate, Marco Rubio, out of the race, although I can't believe that a wingnut like Cornyn will actually officially endorse a gay quasi-moderate against a far right evangelical and risk sparking a GOP civil war. (I guess I was wrong; let the war commence! It looks like it already has; one winger is demanding that the nutroots stop donating to the NRSC. Excellent idea, although not very effective since the $3,369.12 the right wing blogs have been able to raise in the last few years didn't do much good for any of their favorite candidates.)

The National Republican Senatorial Committee will be endorsing Crist, according to a senior Hill operative, marking the first time it has taken sides (for a non-incumbent) in a competitive GOP primary this election cycle.

The committee’s decision will make it tougher for former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio to raise money against Crist, given that the party has given the governor its stamp of approval. Rubio has won support from Florida conservatives and has a base in the Cuban-American community, but will need to raise a significant amount of money to credibly compete against Crist in the primary.

The NRSC’s decision to make an early endorsement also carries some interesting implications down the road. Will the committee now be under pressure to endorse Missouri Senate candidate Roy Blunt, the establishment favorite who faces a likely primary challenge from conservative Sarah Steelman?

And if the committee stays out of that primary, will it suggest that Republicans are less-than-impressed with Blunt’s campaign, which has gotten off to a rocky start.

It also carries implications in Pennsylvania, where the party is looking to find an electable candidate to run against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa). If it can land a more-moderate alternative to Toomey, like Rep. Jim Gerlach, will it offer an endorsement as a recruiting inducement or stay on the sidelines?

I thought you might enjoy watching how angry Outrage makes Republican closet cases. Watch blogger/activist/film star, Mike Rogers being threatened with "a punch across the face" by an hysterical right-wing closet queen TV anchor a few days ago:



Meanwhile former west Florida congresswoman and current chair of the Florida Democratic Party, Karen Thurman picks at entirely different scab that could wreck Crist's candidacy. She makes note of the fact that despite enjoying personal popularity, Crist has been a really bad governor in terms of helping solve any of the real problems that plague Floridians.

"In the face of mounting problems, Floridians expect bold leadership and real solutions from our elected officials.

"By running for U.S. Senate, Charlie Crist has cut and run on the Sunshine State, once again taking the easy way out, avoiding responsibility and leaving the hard work of facing Florida's problems to the next governor.

"At a time when Florida needs real leadership, unfortunately Charlie Crist is running from the mess he created, which is why Floridians are going to send Crist into retirement come Election Day.

"As governor, Crist has had time to jet-set around on his cronies' private jets, attend cocktail parties in Washington D.C., and hobnob with celebrities, yet he has done nothing to create jobs in Florida.

"He has toured Buckingham Palace on the taxpayer's dime, yet he led no efforts to jumpstart Florida's economy.

"While Floridians looked to Crist to lead, all Crist did as governor was cheerlead.

"Despite Crist's promises, taxes didn't 'drop like a rock' but the value of Floridians' homes have. Our economy has tanked while Crist has lived in the Governor's Mansion, but Crist allowed his Republicans to reject federal recovery money and obstruct President Obama's efforts to jumpstart Florida's economy.

"Crist's financial mismanagement has left Florida with the worst fiscal crisis in the state's history, leaving the budget in worse shape, draining rainy day funds and leaving with no solution.

"When Crist didn't lead Florida to a better future as governor, how can Floridians expect him to fight for us in Washington? With his record of failed leadership, just following where the wind blows, it is puzzling why Crist expects Floridians to send him to the U.S. Senate."

You can vote now too! Really. Just go to the St Petersburg Times straw poll and pick between closet case Charlie Crist, right wing sociopath Marco Rubio, corrupt corporate shill Kendrick Meek or fighting progressive Dan Gelber. I'm not going to make any recommendations. By the way, Rubio had his first ad up within minutes of Crist's announcement, marking his territory way to the right of the mainstream of American thought:

Will The Film "Outrage" Wreck Charlie Crist's Senate Campaign?

According to Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, tomorrow's the day Charlie Crist will announce his bid for the U.S. Senate seat he tried to snare in 1998, losing to Bob Graham, who was followed by the retiring Mel Martinez. Were Crist to win he would be leaving Florida politics in a shambles and Florida's economy in an even worse state, one of the most poorly governed states in the nation which has been unable to deal effectively with either the housing crisis or the unemployment crisis. Before Crist goes to DC, though, he will have to face a primary from a far right extremist, Marco Rubio and then either one of two Democrats, unelectable and corrupt patsy Kendrick Meek or fighting progressive Dan Gelber. Crist is trying to fortify himself against charges of abandoning Florida in the middle of a depression by making the spurious claim that the best way he can help the state isn't in Tallahassee but in Washington. I wonder how he will fortify himself against the charges, bound to fly, of gross hypocrisy.

Rubio hopes to get the backing of the Bush family, which may be is certainly poison in a general election but can still help in a closed Republican primary. It remains to be seen how Rubio will take advantage of Crist's starring role in Outrage.

I mentioned the other day that I had gone to see Outrage, the new documentary by Kirby Dick and Mike Rogers. The movie was startling without being sensationalistic. What Dick and Rogers do is expose the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who go out of their ways to victimize gay people. And no one has more to lose than long-rumored-- now proven-- closet case Charlie Crist. Florida media is already starting to pick up on it. The movie was released Friday and the St. Petersburg Times asks, in regard to Crist, "Is it ethical to reveal a politician's private sexual orientation, just because someone feels their policies are anti-gay?"

Right wing Republicans have tried to use Crist's homosexuality against him before, but they've never had a major film to point to and they're never addressed it in terms of hypocrisy. Most people don't care what Crist does in the privacy of his own bedroom. What they may care about is seeing how his homophobic public record conflicts so violently with his own personal behavior and how that rips apart a man's personal integrity and soul. Expect to see a lot of discussions like this across Florida-- and not just in West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale and South Beach gay bars, where everyone already knows Crist is gay, but among the Church going Republican voters who are utterly clueless.

The Most Prominent Conservative-Versus-Moderate Republican Primary Campaign In The Country

Like John McCormack in the far right Weekly Standard, I'm cheering for the conservative, "Jeb Bush protégé," as McCormack so helpfully describes him, Marco Rubio. That's because I want to see progressive Democrat Dan Gelber as the next senator from Florida, a way to give that important state a powerful voice and brilliant critical thinker in the upper house, something that has been sorely missing as we look back over a parade of corrupt hacks and rubber stamps-- on both sides of the aisle.

We covered Rubio's declaration last Tuesday and remarked on Dan Gelber, who was the Democratic Minority Leader of the House when Rubio was Speaker, welcoming him to the race:

"I have a lot of respect for Marco Rubio. He has never broken away from his very conservative principles, even after the course of history has proven many of their ideas to be wrongheaded. The GOP is in the midst of a fight for its basic heart and soul, not to mention its very relevance in the American political discussion, and I know Marco will be a loud and effective voice for those who believe that the direction of the last eight years was the correct one and for the small percentage of Floridians and Americans who believe that a massive shift to the right is the best medicine for what ails America."

I doubt the Weekly Standard would disagree-- except for the "wrongheaded" aspersion. McComack, heart aflutter, is obviously smitten with the "fresh-faced charismatic Cuban American" evangelical extremist and he sees him as the Republicans' Barack Obama. Most Americans are celebrating Obama's cautious steps towards reclaiming U.S.-Cuba policy for the State Department-- and taking it out of the hands of a gang of wealthy, corrupt and, of course, right-wing gangsters (and their sons) who have kept the U.S. from normalizing relations with one of our closest neighbors for decades. But not Rubio.

[H]e addressed the College Republicans and Students for a Free Cuba at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Cuba, he said, presents us with "an opportunity just 90 miles off our shores to defend and stand up for the constitutional and Founding principles of this country."

Rubio called the U.S. embargo "our last and only leverage point" for negotiating Cuban freedom with a successor regime. He added, "I wish we could do in China what I hope we'll do in Cuba, but we can't. There are geopolitical realities."

The students-- a sympathetic audience-- were wowed by the speech, delivered without notes. "I think we just saw the future president of the United States!" exclaimed one undergrad leaving the event. "I just wanted to say thanks... for bringing us some hope in the GOP," another student told Rubio.

Maybe he can go fight it out with Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who also has pretensions for becoming the president of a post-Castro Cuba. That's the only presidency-- other than of the Miami Dade Cuban-American Chamber of Commerce-- Rubio is likely to ever get a chance to vie for. and he won't get a chance to vie for that either. I called my friend Reese Erlich, one of this country's experts on Cuba-America relations and author of the incredible new book, Dateline Havana. He isn't as impressed with Rubio as McCormack is.

Marco Rubio represents the last gasp of the ultra-rightists who want to tell Cubans how to live their lives. Why is it that Republicans favor small government, except when it comes to imposing US power on other countries?

Rubio and some mainstream Democrats argue that the US must pressure Cuba to uphold democracy and human rights. They ignore the history of US support for every two-bit dictator that came to power in Cuba from 1901-1959. If the US was so concerned about democracy, why did it recognize Fulgencio Batista’s military government one day after his 1952 coup?

Cuba has plenty of problems, but that’s for Cubans themselves to resolve. When people like Rubio insist on maintaining the embargo, it only strengthens the widespread belief in Cuba that the US seeks to overthrow their government and restore the ultra-rightist Miami Cubans to power.

Few Americans have been aware of the specifics of how right-wing Cubans-- led by extremists like the Diaz-Balarts and Rubio-- have directed U.S. policy towards the island nation right off our southern coast. When Colin Powell's top aide was asked to assess the threat from Cuba to U.S. security said the U.S. military didn't think Cuba was a threat at all. Let me quote from Dateline Havana:

"Wilkerson participated in war games designed to plan United States response to various Cuban crises. The military's nightmare scenario consisted of political instability in Cuba leading to a large-scale assault by Cuban Americans on the island. Wilkerson said, "What really struck me about the Cuban contingencies when we exercised and gamed was that it didn't turn into any kind of U.S. force presence in Cuba. It turned into a cordoning off Florida to keep Cuban Americans with various small arms... from invading Cuba."

And there is historical precedent for the U.S. military's concerns about out-of-control violent rightists attacking Cuba. They've done it before-- and far more than most Americans are aware, and sometimes with over U.S. help. Were you frightened in the last few weeks about swine flu? No one knows how it started but it scared a lot of people in this country.

In 1971, during the Nixon administration, U.S. agents introduced swine fever virus into Cuba. Cuba had to slaughter over 500,000 infected hogs. The virus originated in Africa and had been unknown in Cuba before the outbreak. Newsday revealed that a CIA-trained Cuban exile had been given the swine virus at Ft. Gulick in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone. U.S. operatives gave him instructions to deliver the virus to Cuba. Even though the CIA denied involvement, the article showed a clear link to U.S. clandestine efforts. In 1977, the Washington Post confirmed, "The CIA had a program aimed at Cuban agriculture, and since 1962 Pentagon specialists had been manufacturing biological agents to be used for this purpose."

In 1981, during the Reagan administration, some 350,000 Cubans were infected with type II dengue virus, which produces potentially deadly fevers. According to Cuban sources, 158 people died, 101 of whom were children. The virus had not been known anywhere in the world and had been created in a laboratory. In 1984, a leader of Omega 7, a terrorist exile group in Miami, admitted in court to spreading the dengue virus.

Rightist fanatics would like nothing more than to insert a "fresh-faced charismatic" young extremist like Rubio into the American political system.

McCormack sees mainstream conservative Charlie Crist as the impediment because Crist is likely to jump into the Florida senatorial race. Recent polls show him thrashing the lunatic fringe Rubio 53-4% in a primary battle and even if Crist decides to not run-- unlikely-- right-wing congressional hacks Connie Mack and Vern Buchanan (each nearly mainstream compared to Rubio) lead him by double-digits. The advantage of a primary with Rubio participating is that it is sure to be bloody. To Rubio Crist isn't obstructionist enough, isn't anti-choice enough, is too pro-environment, isn't in favor of as many anti-working family tax policies as he should be and favors many ideas Floridians like and right-wing maniacs like Rubio, hate. And to Rubio's supporters, Crist is a homo, something the media rarely mentions but something wingers will never stop talking about-- at least en Español.




UPDATE: Outrage-- The Film

I just came back from seeing Mike Roger's movie, Outrage. If Republican voters in Florida see the film, Crist's goose is COOKED. He comes across as such a hypocrite-- and as soooo gay-- that he'd have a really tough time in a closed Republican primary. It'll be interesting to see if Rubio tries to exploit it in some way.