NEW GOP SEX SCANDAL? Latino Politician Gets ‘Sticky Fingers’ WithFemale Right-Wing Journalist!

Don’t you hate it when the MSM make a scandal out of something perfectly innocent like Marco Rubio’s “posh hotel” rendezvous with Jillian Bandes?

Marco Rubio has sticky fingers, and he wants to rinse them off.
“Some of the pancake syrup got on my hands, I’ll be right back,” he told me in the lobby of his posh Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, D.C. just after breakfast.
Maybe he should’ve kept his sticky fingers. After all, the Florida House Speaker might have to go to some extraordinary lengths to get the cash he needs after the release of his latest fundraising numbers: he came in at $340,000, compared to his rival Gov. Charlie Crist’s $4.3 million. . . .

Read the whole sticky thing.

NOT ONE RED CENT!

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who directed me to this July 8 video of an MSNBC appearance in which Jillian drove Jane Hamsher into paroxysms of seething rage:

Not that it is difficult to drive Jame Hamsher into seething rage, but didn’t Jillian look cute doing it?

Hey, Jillian, what’s up with the blond curls? Last time I saw you, your hair was auburn red and straight.

Letter to NRCC Chairman:NOT ONE RED CENT!

As previously announced here, Not One Red Cent will boycott the House Republican campaign committee until the Waxman-Markey Eight are repudiated. I’ve just posted my message to NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions:

It has become increasingly obvious of late that some Republicans have been in Washington too long. None of the eight GOP House members who voted for Waxman-Markey will be re-elected. They will either retire from the House, be defeated in next year’s Republican primaries, or suffer well-deserved defeat on November 2, 2001. Therefore, every penny that the NRCC spends to support the re-election of the Waxman-Markey Eight is wasted money that could be used more effectively to support Republican challengers.
The NRCC must announce a policy of non-support for the Waxman-Markey Eight, or else NRCC fund-raising letters will go directly into the garbage cans of every previous grassroots GOP donor who is tired of seeing his contributions wasted to support nominal “Republicans” that repeatedly betray party principles. . . .

Please read the whole thing, and hit the tip jar to help support the Not One Red Cent blog. Of course, pixels are cheap, but determined persistence ought to be worth something.

UPDATE: Welcome Ed Driscoll readers. For the benefit of the uninitiated, perhaps I should explain the theory of organizational dynamics that informs my attitude toward Republican “leadership.”

I am an ex-Democrat, so I have extensive experience in getting screwed over and backstabbed by clueless losers. And I’ve been a conservative journalist in Washington since 1997 so . . . ditto.

As I’ve said eleventy-zillion times, if you volunteer to be a doormat, don’t complain about the footprints on your back. If you desire to retain your self-respect and dignity, you must retain sufficent independence to be willing to say, “That’s it. No more. I quit. You’ve f***ed me over once too often.”

This is not merely a principle of political life, but is of universal application in human affairs. For example, if you allow your spouse to abuse and betray you without fear of repercussions, you are as responsible for the consequences as the person who abuses and betrays you. My wife has my respect and loyalty, which she reciprocates insofar as I am deserving of her respect and loyalty. Which is to say, she trusts me about as far as she can throw me. Mrs. Other McCain’s beauty is exceeded only by her wisdom.

After Friday night’s Smittypalooza, several of us went out for hamburgers at a tavern near Dupont Circle. Our table was next to a group of three young people, two guys and a girl. Overhearing some remark one of them made — he was from Alabama — I struck up a jocular conversation. This conversation eventually disclosed that the three were “just friends,” and that in fact the Alabamian among them was an intern of the supervision of the lady who (as someone else at our table subsequently remarked) as nearly as amused by my jokes as I was.

Sensing that my intentions might be misinterpreted, I found an opportunity to mention Mrs. Other McCain, to praise her virtues, and to add that we have six children. And if the point needed further emphasis I found an appropriate occasion to repeat one of my favorite sayings: “She’s got a kitchen drawer full of knives, and I’ve got to sleep sometime.”

There is truth in humor, and the same principle applies to any situation where your self-chosen loyalty is involved. I’ve been a University of Alabama Crimson Tide fan since I was a gamete swimming in a desperate effort to become a zygote. I can hardly conceive being anything but a ‘Bama fan. Yet if the folks in Tuscaloosa should ever betray that loyalty, they would find me an implacable foe.

My loyalty to the Democratic Party was similarly hereditary. My parents would have been horrified if, in 1959, they had imagined one of their offspring might eventually vote Republican. Yet the Democrats, knowing this, took shameless advantage of that loyalty. These repeated betrayals were for years excused by me in the same way that a battered wife excuses her husband’s brutality. Hell’s bells, I voted for Mondale!

Then came the day that my Democratic congressman, George “Buddy” Darden, voted for the fateful legislative travesty that I recall as “The Great Gun Grab of 1994.” On that day, the Democratic Party forever forfeited any further claim to my loyalty. On the first Tuesday in November of that year, I cast my first vote ever for a Republican congressional candidate — some obscure Marietta lawyer named Barr — thus joining the majority consensus that it was time that Mr. Darden returned to the private sector.

F*** you, Buddy Darden. And f*** you, Democrats. What part of “From My Cold Dead Hands” is so hard to understand?

Once burned, twice shy, and I could never be as blindly loyal to the Republicans as I once was to the Democrats. That kind of loyalty is for chumps. Being a partisan chump is an invitation to political rape. (Ask gay Democrats how that feels. Or ask some of the Christian conservatives who made the mistake of trusting Ralph Reed. If I ever own an outhouse, I’ll name it in Reed’s honor.)

Politicians will respect their constituents only if they fear their constituents. George “Buddy” Darden once thought he could screw me over without consequence, and learned otherwise in short order. Ralph Reed holds no elective office, nor will he ever. Mene mene tekel upharsin.

When the perfidious Catiline conspired to subvert the Roman republic, Cicero exposed the traitor:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? . . . Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? . . .
O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit.

Hic tamen vivit. But not for long, eh? The Waxman-Markey Eight have signed the death warrants of their political careers, and friends of the republic must be vigilant to expose anyone who aids this act of treachery.

Blame the NRCC

The Waxman-Markey Monstrosity From Hell That Will Destroy the American Economy passed the House by a vote of 219-212 last night while I was attending the inaugural Smittypalooza.

If only four votes had gone the other way, the monstrosity would have been defeated by a 216-215 vote. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate that Michelle Malkin has named the eight Republicans who voted for it. And I’ve got four words for the National Republican Congressional Committee:

Not One Red Cent.

We’ve already said Not One Red Cent for the National Republican Senatorial Committee because Sen. John Cornyn and the NRSC betrayed the GOP grassroots in Florida. Now, add the NRCC to the list.

What’s the point of giving money to the national party if, on key votes, Republican members of the House are indistinguishable from Nancy Pelosi?

Why give money to the campaign committee whose job is to re-elect these RINO sellouts?

• Mary Bono Mack, California
• Mike Castle, Delaware
• Mark Kirk, Illinois
• John McHugh, New York
• Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey
• Leonard Lance, New Jersey
• Dave Reichert, Washington
• Chris Smith, New Jersey

Unless and until all eight of these swine announce their retirements — or are defeated in next year’s primaries — I say the grassroots answer to the NRCC should be NOT ONE RED CENT!

Who’s with me?

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin links. In the comments, my moderate Republican friend Joe Marier argues:

NJ Republicans in danger of getting redistricted out don’t vote against the AFL-CIO, and neither do aspiring Senators in Delaware and Illinois.
Final challenge: name the 8 seats you will take back in exchange for those.
Let these eight get beat by Club For Growth-backed primary challengers, and figure the GOP would still win at least half of the subsequent general elections.

The belief that there is some sort of political security for blue-state Republicans in parroting Sierra Club propaganda and trying to buddy up to the AFL-CIO is akin to the college boy’s belief that he can score with a Women’s Studies major by espousing feminist cant. In all likelihood, she’s a lesbian, but even if she weren’t, why on earth would she be interested in the kind of guy who blabbers on about feminism?

VIDEO: What Charlie Crist Is Up Against

Moe Lane is becoming a believer. As I said at the Hot Air Green Room, everybody who has seen this video is asking the same question: Why in the world would John Cornyn and the NRSC back Charlie Crist against this guy?

Hat tips to Pat and Carol.

BTW, the Not One Red Cent rebellion is growing rapidly: 3,400 visits in the first four days, including nearly 1,400 yesterday, with a boost from Conservative Grapevine.

UPDATE: Now front page at Hot Air, and John Hawkins has just published the petition to the NRSC. If you’re a blogger who wants to sign the petition, e-mail John.

Meanwhile, Matt Lewis reports on the movement, linking to Erick Erickson’s latest “Not One Red Cent” message at Red State.

UPDATE II: Now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE III: Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent and Eric Zimmerman of The Hill both report the story. Blogged by Dan Riehl of Riehl World View and at Hyscience.

UPDATE IV: John McCormack at the Weekly Standard offers side-by-side comparison of Rubio’s speech with video of Crist introducing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Townhall’s Greg Hengler is now a Rubio fan, as is Fausta Wertz.

UPDATE V: K-Lo has a new poll on the Florida Senate race, showing Crist with only 49% favorable among Republicans. Compared to that, Rubio’s relatively low name-ID is inconsequential. How many Americans had heard of Barack Obama 15 months before the 2008 Iowa caucus?

UPDATE VI: The Rebellion Goes Viral! Meanwhile, Matt Lewis sees the video and says:

To be sure, the NRSC’s premature endorsement of Governor Crist would have evoked some negative reaction — even if his primary opponent were some right-wing nobody . . . or a squishy liberal Republican. But with Rubio, the Republican establishment has essentially pushed aside a young, attractive, conservative, Hispanic, highly-qualified, experienced leader.

BTW, you know who has a man-crush on Charlie Crist? Republican “kingmaker” Fred Malek. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE VII: Dad29 and Sundries Shack applaud the Rubio video, Pundette says, “The last two minutes made me cry,” and St. Blogustine says, “It’s Payback Time!”