Whoever said the race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination
in Florida this year could not get more absurd and less attractive
was underestimating the participants.
Republican Congressman Connie Mack of Florida, who currently
leads the race for the right to run against Democratic Senator Bill
Nelson in November, has shown what a loyal Republican and
thoughtful conservative he is by asking Eric Holder’s “Justice”
Department to investigate Florida Republicans for possible criminal
goings-on.
As Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up. Mack says he
wants the most leftist and aggressively political Justice
Department in our history to muck around in the affairs of Florida
Republicans looking for dirt. Does anyone doubt that Eric and his
merry band, the same bunch who consider requiring photo IDs at the
polls to be voter suppression, might just find or manufacture
some?
On the frail basis of some overheated but vaguely sourced
newspaper stories fretting that Mack’s main opponent in the primary
race, George LeMieux, may have exerted pressure on Florida Governor
Charlie Crist in 2009 when Crist appointed LeMieux to the unexpired
portion of former Senator Mel Martinez’s Senate term, Mack has
called on Holder to straighten out the Florida GOP’s closet.
The sources for the charge, if such it even is, that LeMieux
lobbied too hard for the Senate seat, to which he was appointed
over a lineup of Florida Republicans with more impressive
credentials, are indicted former Republican Party of Florida
Chairman Jim Greer and former Lieutenant Governor Jeff Kottkamp,
who wanted the post himself. Kottkamp is a political nonentity, and
Greer stands accused of making insufficient distinction between
RPOF funds and his own. His trial is scheduled for July.
Of course, lobbying Crist for the job would not have been a
crime even if LeMieux did so. What’s a political campaign after all
but lobbying for office? Are we going to jug everyone who runs for
office? Mack goes further out on a limb with these two
way-less-than-reliable-or-objective witnesses. He buys into, or
pretends to buy into, the idea that LeMieux threatened to disclose
harmful information about Crist if Crist didn’t appoint him to the
Senate. It’s hard to imagine that there’s anything harmful about
Crist that could be worse than what just about every Floridian
already knows. Besides, Crist needed LeMieux in the Senate as a
seat-holder for Crist’s own Senate ambitions at least as much as
LeMieux wanted the job.
Here’s a bit from the febrile
letter Craig Engle, Mack’s legal counsel, got off to the
federal agency some still insist on calling The Justice
Department:
If true, these allegations raise serious questions about whether
George LeMieux and Charlie Crist violated federal and Florida
anti-corruption laws by allegedly securing and making an
appointment to the United States Senate, possibly through extortion
and bribery, and because of the nature of the underlying
allegations, questions also arise as to whether there is an ongoing
conspiracy between George LeMieux and Charlie Crist.
Wow! Extortion and bribery. Conspiracy. (And lions, and tigers,
and bears, oh my.) Please wait here while I catch my breath.
This isn’t coherent accusation based on credible evidence.
Unless there’s a lot Mack and Company have not brought forward,
this is mere hyperventilation. Both Mack and Engle need to bend
over and breathe into a bag before telling Holder to forget it, and
writing a letter to the Republican Party of Florida apologizing for
trying to get Holder’s highly partisan nose buried in their
business.
If the allegations in Mack’s attack raise any serious questions,
they are less about LeMieux’s conduct than about Mack’s judgment
and about his willingness, in the name of the raw ambition he’s
accusing LeMieux of, to call down Democratic attack dogs on Florida
Republicans. Does he think for a second that Eric Holder and his
operatives would conduct an objective investigation of LeMieux and
Crist? If Mack believes Holder, set loose among Florida
Republicans, would stop at an inquiry of LeMieux and Crist and not
use this opportunity for a search and destroy mission on the entire
Republican Party of Florida, then Mack is too stupid to serve in
the U.S. Senate.
The final question to ask Mack is if he is so sold on Greer’s
and Kottkamp’s credibility and political insights, does he plan to
appoint them both to high positions in his Senate office should he
be elected?
If you hear the laughing from Bill Nelson’s campaign
headquarters, it’s probably about this peccadillo. They’ve lucked
out again.
(Above photo of Connie Mack is by Gage
Skidmore.)
