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Dave Weigel at Slate reports that “The Gay Republican Presidential Candidate (Whom You Never Heard of) Calls it Quits“:
Karger, a successful Republican strategist who’d come out of the closet and quit working for other candidates, had launched a quixotic campaign with one real purpose: Hounding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for its support of gay marriage bans…
Gay Republican activists didn’t take Karger seriously. GOPround, the press-savvy gay Republican group, took pains to criticize a campaign that, by taking up the libertation label, made it look like gay rights were hopelessly marginalized inside the party. But Chris Barron, co-founder of GOProud, reacted to the Karger exit with strange new respect. “Congrats to Fred,” said Barron. “I don’t think he was ever running for President, I think he was running to prove a point and to make a statement. It’s fair to say that he succeeded in doing both.”
Well, Mr. Karger never overestimated his own chances. There are “fringe”, unserious, issue-humping candidates on both sides in every presidential campaign (the unspeakable Randall Terry is running as a “pro-life” Democrat). But then there are the GOP’s totally Very Serious, MSM-respectable candidates… like Rick Santorum, now a prominent spokesperson for the Romney campaign. (The difference between Terry and Santorum is some millions of Koch-funding, plus the fact that Sanctorum only discusses jailing women who use birth control and murdering health-care providers of “abortificants” as a theoretical.)
And because the GOP is a Serious Party for the adults in the room, GOProud has endorsed Mitt Romney.
Seriously!
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Apart from Republican cognitive dissonance, what’s on the agenda for the start of the semi-official start of summer?