Does the Media Advise and Consent to the Republican Closet? The Buzz About Charlie Crist

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.

The same applies to McCain's good friend, Lindsey Graham. Rush Limbaugh said as much on his radio show. Reiterating his longstanding contempt for McCain and his supporters, he said, "Lindsey Graham is certainly close enough to [McCain] to die of anal poisoning." Nobody asked Limbaugh to elaborate.

Washington Republicans enforced the rule three years ago, when Tom DeLay plotted his return to power. Forced to step down from his position as Majority Whip once he was indicted in Texas, DeLay planned to fight the charges and eventually return to his leadership post.

"DeLay and [House speaker Dennis] Hastert wanted someone to hold the job but with no ambitions to stay in it, and had in mind Rep. David Dreier of California. But when the indictment was unsealed Wednesday, conservatives in the GOP caucus immediately erupted in anger over rumors about the selection of Dreier, whom they regard as too moderate, and Hastert eventually agreed to elevate Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo," The Wall Street Journal Online September 29, 2005

That's right. According to the Washington press, David Dreier was too "moderate." Or, as the Journal would later report, Dreier was "a gentleman in the not-so-gentle world of the House Republican leadership. Witty, articulate, friend to the Annenbergs and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger," Drier also "shuns any elected party post, preferring to protect his privacy as a loyal lieutenant to Speaker Dennis Hastert." Wink, wink. In a subtle but powerful way, the Journal was complicit in spreading a form of disinformation about what happens underneath the surface of Republican sanctimony on gay marriage and other issues.

House members who opposed Dreier were motivated less by ideology than by ruthless pragmatism. If, as Karl Rove said, Joe Wilson's wife was "fair game," then so was Dreier's husband, or, er, highly paid Chief of Staff, with whom Dreier shared his Washington home.

Dreier himself had been outed in 2004 by L.A. Weekly. And you know what they always say, when one Republican House leader shares his Washington home with his gay Chief of Staff, as Speaker Dennis Hastert did with Chief of Staff Scott Palmer, it's a coincidence. When two Republican House leaders share their homes with their respective gay Chiefs of Staff, it looks like a trend, a trend that might upend the Republicans' 2006 election strategy.

That strategy was heavily reliant on H. J. Res. 88, which had 127 Republican co-sponsors. Eventually brought up before the full House in July 2006, H. J. Res. 88 enshrined a ban on gay marriage in the Constitution. Had he held the post, Dreier's job as Republican Whip would have been to count the votes before the final tally. Such irony would have been irresistible to liberal bloggers, who were still asking questions about the special White House access afforded Jeff Gannon, that gay whore turned Milli Vanilli journalist.

Sometimes, Republicans promote legislation designed to enhance the public image of their closet cases. And the press plays along. Remember the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act of 2002? It was sponsored by Mark Foley.

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? Novak professed to be shocked when he heard about Larry Craig. " I have talked to several of my sources in the Senate," he told Al Hunt on Bloomberg. "This came as a huge surprise to me as I said on this program...they knew about it. They knew he had this problem."

Comments

[Ramirez]

Rice
Crist
Dreier
Hastert
Foley
Gannon
Graham

Did you miss any?

[GiggidyGeshmoygen]

george bush and victor ashe (current ambassador to poland and former roommate back in their cheerleading days)

[ProfessorDuh]

Internet smears are being spread about both Obama and Clinton, but not about McCain. Now, I wonder which crooked political party is behind those smears?

[Merg]

There are several appalling things I see here in this article. 1) That anybody thinks David Drier - R -CA is somehow a moderate is ludicrous. 2) That Tom DeLay should be allowed back in Congress in any capacity at all and 3) That Charlie Christ felt forced to date (former FL secy of state Katherine Harris to deflect gay rumors...clearly poor Charlie has suffered enough. Oh, is he gay? It doen't make a bit of difference to me.

[IntrepidReader]

Republicans understand that America only cares about image, not truth, though we pretend otherwise. We are only too eager--pathetically so--to accept even the weakest cover stories for movie stars, athletes, or politicians who seem to be questionable sexually. The public WANTS to be ignorant, misled, fooled. What it doesn't want is to have to face the fact that an NFL quarterback or a sexy matinee idol or a popular politician might actually like having sex with other men.

It seems likely to me that behind closed doors, the Republican party makes it clear that homosexuals are fine unless they're caught. Maybe the Democrats don't offer such assurances, or maybe it's because a liberal Democrat who was 50, unmarried, and living with a younger man would instantly be thought gay no matter how stringently he denied it. His party and his platform would not allow him to hide behind homophobia to cover his own sexuality the way a Republican can.

[TomInJax]

WTF are you talking about. There are several openly gay democrats in congress.

The point of this article is to point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans. Maybe you WANT to be mislead, but I think more and more it's becoming ok with the general public. My testosterone laden co-workers are fine with me. The problem is if these straight men are hiding there gay friends behind hateful and discriminating legislation. If they stood up like Barack and said hey it's ok to be gay, which he did to a predominantly African American crowd at a church, who at first were cold to his statement but were brought around by that brilliant rhetoric, then we wouldn't even need to read blogs like these.

[Indedave]

Renounce me! Denounce me! Beat me with the party whip!

[MinerSam]

The Media seems ot be advising Obama on how to attack Hillary Clinton. GE-TV consistantly either attacks the Democratic frontrunner themselves with lies or out of context and blacked out "reporting" or gives others tens of billons in free air time to do it.

And you know who always seemed like a raving queen to me? Utah Senator Oren Hatch. David Drier is one of the meanest liars out there. How sad.

And what about Haily Barber, Governor of Missisippi. He presented the Republican Party platform, not only as opposed to Gay Marriage but specifically worded to include Civil Unions. Wasn't Mr. Barber
discovered being serviced sexaully at Republican Party headquarters? He endorsed McCain this week and is now on the short list for his VP. And let's see what other vile immoral dishonest individual is being discussed; Kay Biley.

It is remarkable that the best statespeople get attacked with out of context reporting and "snapshots that make them look bad while the ruthless ones are touted as great by a Media beholden to tthe Republicans for Media Consolidation.

[Durango]

The point is NOT whether we care.
The point is that the Repukes cares.

And then the more interesting point is that the Washington DC Repukes don't really cars. The are tolerant of gays in their midst. But they fear the unwashed masses of Repuke followers. Especially after their craven appeals to the worst in those followers.

So then the issue is HYPOCRISY

[CanadianinNY]

Mr Fiderer, why should we care if the governor of Florida is gay or straight? I think these are gutter politics and as progressives we should not engage in innuendoes and whisper campaigns. I personally think it is tragic that people are forced to deny their own sexuality. We should focus on their stand on issues not their bed partners.

[ProfessorVP]

If somebody was called straight, would you call it "gutter politics"???? I think not.

[fpie]

If decrying helping little old ladies cross the street would hurt Republican candidates I think that would be fine. I hate to be suggesting dirty pool but in case you haven't noticed we are in a real crissis here and I don't really care what it takes to pry these crazy peoples' hands from the wheel.

[Marioth]

It would be less tragic if people like Charlie Crist didn't fondle men in private while decrying the practice in public. It's not the sex, it's the hypocracy, and it is well in-bounds so long as elected officials engage in it,

Indeed, if the public did not bash the gays, the lives of gays would be less tragic. This is a topic worth the public's notice. Or shall we just strap them to fenceposts and pistol-whip them?

Your call for silence = death. Grow up.

Pax,
M.

[surfcitysteven]

There is nothing wrong with being gay. But gay republicans are really disgusting.