If Only ProtectMarriage.com Enlisted the Help of George Alan Rekers
—David Boies, one half of the Olson-Boies team in Perry, on the prospect of john George Alan Rekers being a defense witness [via]
No. 1 · PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS wrote, “Excellent bitchslap on Florida AG Bill McCollum………. Boies is pointing out what should McCollum should have learned his first day of law school, you must thouroughly vet any witnesses you are going to put on the stand. Not pander to biased groups attempting to push their agenda in a court of law……”
You are forgetting that McCollum probably knew he was going to run for governor. One advantage of filing his lawsuit (even using Rekers) is that it’s a cheap way of getting support from the religious right wing. The usual Republican strategy is to “run to the right” during primaries and then “run to the left” afterwards. Filing that case means he didn’t have to run to the right as hard as he can quietly point to that case and indicate that he has to focus on other issues to get elected. Losing the lawsuit doesn’t matter – he can simply blame the proverbial “activist judge” and point out that he’ll make more conservative appointments to the courts than his opponent will.
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@B: To gain favor with the lunatics? Filing the lawsuit: Yes Hiring Reekers: Absolutly No…………Reekers was paid between $60,000
00 and $120,000.00 for his “testimony”. Going to be an issue he is going to have to deal with, it definatley backfired on him….
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No. 4 · PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS wrote, “@B: To gain favor with the lunatics? Filing the lawsuit: Yes Hiring Reekers: Absolutly No…………Reekers was paid between $60,000 and $120,000.00 for his ‘testimony’.”
Check out http://wthrockmorton.com/2010/.....as-expert/ (the author is not particularly gay-friendly but still is pretty negative towards McCollum). McCollen apparently suggested Rekers, but they had about 30 other people they wanted to use as expert witnesses and all declined (including the author of the URL I cited above) so Rekers was their only choice.
It occurred before Rekers’ rentboy scandal (i.e., before most voters had ever heard of Rekers). Probably what actually happened is that McCollen figured they needed a witness and was willing to pay for it, even if the price was high, so he made a snap decision to go with what they could get. He probably figured the average person wouldn’t notice and the lunatics would think he was doing a good job, which would plausibly have been true if Rekers hadn’t become fodder for people like Stephen Colbert (whose wisecracks about Rekers were hilarious). It is also possible that McCollum just thought he had to support a state agency in a lawsuit (that seems to be his spin on it, for whatever that is worth).
My guess is that the Rekers scandal will be “old news” well before the election. BTW, if you look at the “issues” part of McCullen’s campaign web site ( http://www.billmccollum.com/issues/ ) it says nothing about opposing gay rights. He did try to distance himself from Rekers and said he wouldn’t hire Rekers if he knew then what he knows about Rekers today ( http://www.towleroad.com/2010/.....wreck.html ) which will probably take the wind out of the sails for any attempt by his opponent to tie McCollum to Rekers (McCollum also emphasized that a different state agency actually paid Rekers).
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Excellent bitchslap on Florida AG Bill McCollum……….
Boies is pointing out what should McCollum should have learned his first day of law school, you must thouroughly vet any witnesses you are going to put on the stand. Not pander to biased groups attempting to push their agenda in a court of law……