Operative: “Greer is functionally dead.”
RPOF Chairman will likely be gone by Christmas
By Chris Ingram
The latest from the Jim Greer fiasco is more rumors that he has resigned and Charlie has accepted his resignation. Certainly between Charlie and Greer, the two of them must have enough gray matter between their ears to figure Jim Greer’s tenure as RPOF Chairman is going to end one way or another.
I was not able to confirm this with attribution but let’s just say the three people I spoke with are all credible sources, one of whom said if Greer doesn’t resign before the middle of next week, he’ll be “functionally dead by the time we finish with him.” He added, “If he’s not [politically] dead by Tuesday, I don’t know much about politics,” — this came from someone with more than three decades of service to the GOP.
Sources say at least two Republican Members of Congress have signed on to a letter calling for Greer to resign. This is in addition to over sixty party leaders on the RPOF Executive Committee who have signed the rescind Greer letter. On top of that, four out of five of the living past RPOF Chairs are reported to have signed onto a similar letter and former Chairman Tom Slade will have an op-ed piece in a major Florida paper this week blasting Greer and asking Charlie to get rid of him.
The wild card in all this is the Republican members of the Florida House and Senate. Many of these bozos have (or have had) RPOF Amex cards which they would probably rather not explain the expenses on said cards to voters (and probably their wives). As such, they’ve stuck with Greer, who has protected them by not releasing the Amex details. As a source of contention, this matter has been/will be diffused with Alan Bense reported to be the interim/post-Greer Chairman — selected by Charlie and House/Senate leaders. Bense is believed to believe there is no benefit in “exposing” inappropriate charges to RPOF credit cards (nothing like protecting your buddies, but hey, we’ll be rid of Greer at least!). Rather, Bense apparently favors putting this matter to rest by ridding the party of Greer and moving on. That’s something the RPOF Executive Committee will have to decide, and if it does in fact go that way, the PROF Budget Committee will hopefully put checks and balances in place to ensure another Greer-type chairmanship doesn’t lead to a repeat of the last two years.
In conclusion, I hate to sound like a broken record with all the “Greer is gone” talk, but let me say this: I’ve been working in politics for twenty years and I will be shocked if Greer isn’t gone by Christmas, and I will shave my head if he’s still the chairman of the RPOF on February 1, 2010. I don’t have much hair to begin with, so don’t get too excited…
Hopefully Charlie will find him some state Park Ranger job in the depths of the Everglades in Monroe County making eighty grand a year — heck, that’s four times what he’d have ever made sacking groceries at Publix, which is where he’d be if he had never met Charlie Crist.
Stay tuned…
Chris Ingram is the president and founder of 411 Communications a corporate and political communications firm, and publisher of www.IrreverentView.com. Ingram is a frequent pundit on Fox News and CNN, and has written opinion columns for the Washington Times, UPI, Front Page Florida, and National Review online. E-mail him at: Chris@411Communications.com.
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.