Who knew???!!! :)

[almostdiva]

As announced this am, Ken Mehlman, former RNC and Bush Campaign chair is gay. <shocking>. And is now going to advocate for the legality of same sex marriage. "Mehlman, The Atlantic said, acknowledged that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda. He told the magazine he regrets not taking the party message to the gay community."

[Ninong]

Rebecca,

I understand your post; however, I'm going to go off on Ken Mehlman because I can't stand that SOB. He and Karl Rove were responsible for putting George W. Bush in the White House.

In answer to the question you posed in the title of your thread, "Who knew?" Everybody!

Does finally coming out of the closet change anything? No!

Ken Mehlman is a despicable excuse for a human being, just as he was when he was field director for the 2000 Bush-Cheney Campaign before becoming White House Director of Political Affairs and finally Campaign Manager for Bush's Re-election Campaign in 2004 before he was named Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

It was Mehlman and Karl Rove who whipped up the right-wing Christianist extremists into a fevered frency over the "gay marriage" issue in order to get out the vote for their boy. Gays, Guns and God: that was the GOP's anthem from the very first days of the Bush Administration. As soon as he became White House Director of Political Affairs Mehlman started pushing the Christianists to get anti-gay marriage laws and constitutional amendments on the ballot in their state as a way to get out the vote for Bush in 2004. Both Mehlman and Rove are the spawn of Lee Atwater.

Mehlman participated in weekly telephone conference calls with national leaders of the religious right, such as that creepy Ralph Reed, co-founder and executive director of the Christian Coalition, and that phony Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals. Ted Haggard used to say that he was cured of The Gay but lately he has taken to saying that he never had The Gay in the first place. It was all just a big misunderstanding.

Ken Mehlman is just another gay Republican hypocrite. The list is quite long and several of them are prominent members of the House and the Senate.

The Republican Party seems to have more than its fair share of hypocrites, both straight and gay. The Democracts have some hypocrites too but not as many as the GOP and certainly not as holier-than-thou hypocritical as the GOP.

For example, Democrat Eliot Spitzer was a hypocrite who made political hay out of prosecuting prostitution while he himself was spending tens of thousands of dollars on high-priced hookers. He admitted that he was a hypocrite and resigned his office as Governor of New York.

Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) campaigned on a Family Values platform, parading his wife and kids on stage at every event, while secretly patronizing hookers in both New Orleans and D.C. Vitter even gave a lengthy speech on the floor of the House defending the sanctity of marriage. After he was caught, Vitter confessed his "serious sin" and then went on about his business as a United States Senator as if nothing had happened. In fact, when he returned to the Capitol a couple of weeks later, he was greeted with a "loud, standing ovation" by the other members of the GOP caucus at their regular Wednesday luncheon.

South Carolina's Republican Governor Mark Sanford admitted that he was actually "hiking the Appachlation Trail" in Argentina with his mistress instead of attending to the job of being governor of South Carolina. He didn't even bother to call home on his son's birthday!!! He was too busy "hiking" in Argentina. He held a press conference that has to go down as the weirdest two hours in history. He went back to work as governor of the state as if nothing had happened. He was another GOP hypocrite who used Family Values as his campaign platform and paraded his wife and five young sons everywhere he went during the campaign. I'm glad to see his wife divorced his ass.

Does Mehlman's coming out change anything? No. He's still a POS and always will be. If Jews found out that Hitler was part-Jewish, would it change anything? No. If gay Jews found out that Hitler was gay, would it change anything? Would gay Jews hate him any less? No.

[almostdiva]

I just continue to find it highly ironic that these guys who initially parade their "family values" and religious/conservative credentials end up being gay (or sleeping with hookers or whatever else). Not that it matters or changes anything as you say.

And as you say, EVERYONE knew about him anyway, so what's the big point? I guess he figured that it was "safe" for him to admit it now.

I am personally waiting for Karl, now that he's divorced, to make his announcement.

Honesty in politics. What a crazy concept...

[Ninong]

Rebecca,

Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman were at the center of everything sleazy that happened during the Bush years. Remember Jack Abramoff? Remember how many former Abramoff employees became aides in the White House, including the woman who was Karl Rove's Chief of Staff after previously working as Abramoff's private secretary? Remember former Abramoff employee David Safavian, who was appointed by Bush as Chief of Staff of the General Services Administration before being indicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for corruption?

Remember the official White House visit by Omar Bongo, President/Dictator for Life of Gabon? Mehlman set up that visit with President Bush in the Oval Office. After it came out that Bongo had paid $9 million to Abramoff to arrange that reception, Mehlman said he did it in the "interest of national security" and that then-NSC Advisor Condoleezza Rice encouraged it. Karl Rove's chief of staff later resigned in disgrace. I believe the official charge against her was accepting expensive gifts from her former boss in exchange for "favors" she performed for him in her capacity as Rove's chief of staff.

Mehlman and Rove were the dirty-tricks operatives in the Bush Administration just as their mentor, Lee Atwater, who invented the position in the Nixon Administration.

[Ninong]

I am personally waiting for Karl, now that he's divorced, to make his announcement.

I would be surprised if Karl Rove ever admits that he's gay. I think he will stay closeted for the rest of his miserable life. If Sigmund Freud were still around, I'm sure he would have a lot of say about Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and why they pushed anti-gay issues so hard.

[Ninong]

Here's a 2006 article by James Moore that asks the question, when will Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman come out of the closet? We know the answer in the case of Mehlman.

That article was taken from the book, "The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power."

[Ninong]

The Washington Post is headlining this as: Ken Mehlman and the same-sex marriage debate.

Here's the money quote:

Mehlman described his coming out as a personal journey that brought him to accept that he is gay. Asked whether he would have been able to accomplish what he did inside the party had he known then and stated at the time that he was gay, he demurred. "I'm not going to speculate on that," he said. "I don't know the answer to that."

(I added the bold.)

I cannot believe that a reporter like Dan Balz can honestly write something like that. He's regurgitating the Mehlman spin that he only recently came to the realization that he is gay. That's absurd. Just ask his friends from college -- like Phil Berg, who accompanied Mehlman to the 2004 inaugural events.

Of course Mehlman knew he was gay when he did all the crap he did to ingratiate himself with the hatemongers on the right-wing fringe of American politics. It's a little late for him to suddenly claim a revelation from on high. I can just imagine how shocked he must have been to find out that he had caught The Gay after all those years of using fear of The Gay as a tool to get out the vote.