Life is just different if you’re a powerful Republican. Or his fiancee.

At a cost to taxpayers of $255,000, Gov. Charlie Crist embarks with staff and dozens of corporate executives Saturday on an 11-day European trade mission in the hope of striking business deals to spark Florida’s flagging economy.

The group will travel to London, Paris, Madrid and Russia’s St. Petersburg…Crist is also meeting with Britain’s Prince Charles and his brother, Prince Andrew.

The governor’s fiancée, Carole Rome, is going as one of the business “delegates,” who pay for their own hotel and airfare. The Fisher Island resident is a consultant to her family’s Halloween costume business.

Yeah, I’m sure Halloween costumes are big bucks all over Europe. But even if they were, it’s unlikely a single Floridian would get any work from it. The wholesaler, whose slogan is, “Where Fashion Meets Halloween,” is based in New York but I doubt its products are made there either. I’m thinking China.

So why are Charlie and Carole spending part of the summer in Europe?

Asked what he hopes to accomplish, Crist said: “Economic opportunities for Florida. You look at what’s happening in London. To the extent the British visit Florida, love and invest in Florida — as do Russians — that has been a help to our real-estate market obviously.”

So…the dollar is weak and foreigners are snapping up discount Florida real estate, and the governor wants to help them do it?

At least we taxpayers won’t be paying for Rome’s hotel rooms. If it were any other governor traveling with his fiancee, I’d just nod and wink about the possibility of her staying in her own room. But there is long-standing speculation Crist is gay and in the closet, and is rumored to be marrying Rome to further his chances of being selected as John McCain’s running mate. Yeah, Carole will probably be sleeping alone.

The future Mrs. Charlie Crist

Pull out your wallets, kids, and prepare to wager. We’ll need two separate pools. One is for the person who most closely predicts how soon Charlie Crist, 51 and gay, will call off his engagement to Carole Rome, 38 and not quite divorced yet, if John McCain doesn’t pick him as his running mate. The other is for how long the marriage will last if McCain does pick him, or alternatively, if Charlie goes through with it just to prove he’s not gay. Which he is. Gay.

But first, let’s enjoy Charile’s newfound bliss vicariously, by reading how his engagement came to be.

Crist, 51, asked Carole Rome to marry him Thursday morning at his St. Petersburg apartment, giving her a blue sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds. She immediately said yes.

“I’m very happy and couldn’t be more pleased. What a great way to celebrate America’s birthday,” said Crist, who has been mentioned as a potential running mate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. “We’ve been talking about it for quite a while. I asked her while we were looking out over Tampa Bay and I couldn’t think of a better place to do it.”

O.K., how many men not in the closet say they “couldn’t be more pleased” that the woman they passionately love accepted their proposal? And how many describe the experience as “a great way to celebrate America’s birthday?” That would be…let’s see…rounding off to the next decimal point…carrying the one…adjusting for the Eastern time zone…yeah, zero.

But maybe Charlie was flummoxed by the scope of it all.

Asked what made him fall in love, Crist said, “Her beautiful smile, her sweetness, her brilliance — all of it.”

“All of it?” “It?” Did he really just say, “all of it?” Why not, “Et cetera, et cetera. I am the king?”

Charlie is blaming his years of bachelorhood on the bad experience he had when he attempted heterosexual marriage in his youth. That time, the union lasted days.

“It made me be very selective, candidly. Those things tend to make you gun-shy a little bit, but I’m so blessed to have found such a wonderful woman,” Crist said. “It sure is great to find the right one…

“It will be awfully nice to have her at the mansion. It’s a big place to have to be alone in,” he said.

Yeah, once she moves in they can watch movies together and try each other’s sun screens (hope hers is better than his), and swap Lean Cuisines and stuff. Fun! But here’s the kicker.

Rome was previously married to Blue Star Jets president Todd Rome. She has two daughters, aged 9 and 11, but Crist said he hopes the couple has a child of their own someday.

She’s 38, Charlie. Someday better be real soon or you might have to use third-party assists like artificial insemination. Whoops, my bad.

There’s a highly entertaining buzz going on at the Buzz, the St. Petersburg Times’ political blog. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has been stepping up his campaign to be John McCain’s running mate, talking partisanship here and piety there. It’s that last one that has Floridians snorffling.

Buzz noticed that Gov. Charlie Crist gave a very public nod to his girlfriend Carole Rome, which might just be a first for the governor, at least in a public speech.

“Lt. Gov. (Jeff) Kottkamp and I are lucky guys. You’re blessed with Cindy and I’m blessed with Carole, and that’s a special thing,” Crist said during his speech at a Republican Party of Florida fundraiser on Thursday night.

Crist is widely believed to be gay and his new friend Carole Rome considered a beard to help him win the McCain vice presidential spot. Rome is in the process of a divorce from Bluestar Jets CEO Todd Rome, reportedly because of her wanton spending. Comments to the blog post tell even more.

• This will not play well in future divorce proceedings.
• McGreevey, Part II. Wait until the blessed Carole sues the hell out of Charlie for marrying her for political gain. Do you think she is going to be happy in his St. Pete condo?…When it comes time for Charlie to fess up and join the priesthood, we will all enjoin the sideshow of another McGreevey trial.
• Yes, he is blessed to have Carole because he thinks it will keep the national scrutiny from his life. Sorry Charlie. Everyone knows your game and the gold digger Rome won’t be around once McCain makes his announcement and you finally realize IT’S NOT YOU.
• I think Charlie is the gold digger. I think she is the one with the money. This story is so predictible it isn’t even interesting. They get married, have a 3 page spread in People (his interest in the Hollywood-type of press coverage) and in 3-4 years, major blow out with boyfriend selling out to the Inquirer and a nasty divorce. Books written by both parties.
• Getting married at this point would absolutely no political gain; it would just raise more questions.
• Will Carole be blessed to have him when someone other than Cristi is standing next to McCain on the dais in Minneapolis? If CC doesn’t get the VEEP spot, Mrs. Rome will be dropping him like a rock.
• She’s married and he is gay. WHAT a pair!
• 8:58, you seem to forget Charlie Crist’s track record of dropping women like a rock after they have outlived their usefulness as beards. Remember his campaign girlfriend that he quickly dispatched after the inaugural?
• GET BACK TO YOUR OFFICE AND DO SOMETHING YOU OVER-TANNED, HAIR-DYED, LYING, CORPORATE-PUPPET, PHOTO-OPPING ON OUR DIME, PAPER DOLL FREAKING FRAUD!
• When Crist retires, he and Carole could live in Beverly Hills, Florida. There’s a Winn-Dixie there for shopping.

A ladies’ man?

If you’re like most Floridians, when you hear the words, “Charlie Crist” and “sex tape,” you immediately expect to see a little hombre en hombre action. You’d be wrong, at least for now.

As Politics1 points out, however, the timing of the supposed PG (as opposed to the racier PG-13) rated video is highly suspect. Charlie just wrapped up a weekend with John McCain and his other vice presidential contestants at Cindy’s ranch in Arizona.

I can picture the conversation:

McCain: I’d really like to pick you, Charlie, since you’ve raised a buttload of dinero for me, and there’s a teeny, tiny chance you could deliver me Florida, but I’m worried because you’re so gay.

Charlie: I’ve stayed in the closet this long, John. I sure ain’t coming out now.

McCain: But people talk…

Charlie: Hmmmm. Let me call Roger Stone and my current beard, Carole Rome.

McCain: O.K., get back to me on it.

Here’s the Politics1 version:

Politics1 Exclusive. How interested is Florida Governor Charlie Crist in being John McCain’s VP running mate? So much so that veteran GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone — who coordinated a few dirty stunts in support of Crist during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign — is quietly peddling a so-called “Charlie Crist sex tape.” That’s what Stone called it during a telephone conversation.

Stone claims the tape, which he is saving for the national shows, “shows Charlie fooling around in a hotel elevator with his girlfriend. They’re making out.”

…The video was seemingly staged to kill the rumors that Crist is gay. Stone claims the tape — which he discussed recently with Politics1, but didn’t show to us (“I’m saving it for the national shows”) — “shows Charlie fooling around in a hotel elevator with his girlfriend…They’re making out.” Adds Stone: “It was captured on a security camera in the elevator” last month. And Stone just conveniently happens to have a copy of the hotel’s elevator surveillance tape, just when Crist’s name is in play for the VP spot. Hmm. As for Crist’s purported girlfriend — presuming it is the same one he took as his date to the White House Correspondents Dinner in DC a few weeks ago — she’s still married (and not to Crist). Disclaimer: Always be skeptical of anything from Stone.

If Carole is not technically divorced from Todd Rome, the CEO of Bluestar Jets, she soon will be. The couple separated last summer and he is already engaged himself. The Romes were reported to have split because of Carole’s profligate spending, until as the New York Post put it, Todd “realized ‘he could no longer afford his wife’s spending habits…and put a cap on her bank account.'”

Why does thinking about Charlie and Carole make me flash on a picture of Karen and Jack from Will and Grace?

What’s the deal with Republicans needing to trot out a Democrat at their convention every four years? And what’s up with so-called Democrats who are eager to play the role of the straight-talking, fair-minded bipartisan who totally gets them?

This year’s Zell Miller award goes to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, party uncertain, of Connecticut, who will probably address the Republican presidential convention when it’s held in Minnesota’s Twin Cities in September.

Sen. Joe Lieberman — the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 — is willing to address the Republican National Convention if it will help Sen. John McCain win in November, his office confirms to CNN.

In an interview published Tuesday night, the independent Connecticut senator told The Hill newspaper that “If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will.”

Let’s just hope Lieberman doesn’t end his address by challenging Chris Matthews to a duel. For those of you too young or too old to remember, Zell Miller did precisely that in 2004 when the Hairball host pissed him off totally by asking him, after his shining moment of glory speaking before the adoring Republican assembly, if he was serious about any of that trash he had just talked about John Kerry. Cast your mind back to one of the classic moments in convention history…

[…]

No less than Republican operative Torie Clarke seems to be right on the money about Hillary Clinton. Here’s what the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Donald Rumsfeld said on ABC’s This Week concerning the “people are bitter” comment by Barack Obama.

I think he can recover from this and I think he will, pretty easily. I think Hillary Clinton can overplay her hand. To prove that she’s a real person of the people, she’s out there drinking fake boiler makers, and this, and that. It’s just laughable.

[Time Magazine’s] Mark Halperin: They were real boiler makers.

Clarke: Crown Royal? Sorry, in Western Pennsylvania you don’t drink your boiler makers with Crown Royal. It’s a little bit tougher than that. But I think they may not play this that well. They may overplay this hand.

Clarke was born in Pittsburgh, so we’ll take her word on the cocktails. She’s also correct so far on Hillary’s shameless exploitation of Obama’s quite astute observation. Here’s what Obama actually said:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.”

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The Clinton team wasted no time in whipping up the voters, handing out, “I’m not bitter” stickers in North Carolina. She has also taken to defending hunting, to make it seem to the bitter, ignorant masses she is pandering to that Obama was attacking it.

But the woman’s complete lack of self-awareness is so far even more evident than Clarke’s predicted miscalculation.

After a weekend spent making direct appeals to gun owners and church goers, Hillary Clinton said Sunday a query about the last time she fired a gun or attended church services “is not a relevant question in this debate” over Barack Obama’s recent comments on small town Americans.

“We can answer that some other time,” Clinton said at a press conference held in a working class neighborhood [in Scranton]…

“We have been working very hard to make it clear that we have millions of Democrats who are church going and gun-owning,” [Clinton] said. “And we are tired of having Republicans, or frankly our own Democrats, give any ammunition to Republicans because what happens then is Republicans take advantage of the situation.”

REPUBLICANS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION?

Somebody get me a glass of water.

But speaking of predictions, I’d like to go on record now as forecasting the true “dream ticket” in 2008. If McCain wants someone as willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill the dream of the White House as he is, he should pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate. They seem to agree on just about everything. Deciding which of the two of them is the bigger ambition whore is the hard part.

Don’t you hate it when someone you don’t like does something you’re forced to applaud? Let’s hear it for Sen. Joe Lieberman. The one-time Democrat who lost his way after he and Al Gore were robbed of the White House in 2000 finally showed up. He’s asking the Internal Revenue Service very good questions about why they are singling out Barack Obama.

…the agency had advised the United Church of Christ last month of its “reasonable belief” the church violated a ban on partisan electioneering when Obama appeared at its 50th General Synod in Hartford last June.

But Lieberman contends there are no published guidelines on how churches remain tax-exempt while addressing issues of the day. The IRS’s “we know it when we see it so just take our word for it” policy makes compliance challenging.

Lieberman wrote that he was concerned about that inquiry and asked the IRS to explain “the specific process by which it establishes the statutorily required ‘reasonable belief’ of improper activity.”

…Lieberman complained that the agency’s guidance “implies that an individual who is a well-known candidate can become a ‘non-candidate’ for the purpose of a church appearance,” but that it doesn’t explain “how such a candidate can be transformed into a non-candidate for the purposes of the appearance.”

Meanwhile, the State Department announced it’s firing employees who passed their spare time browsing through Obama’s passport files. The agency is careful to identify the offenders as “contract workers,” reminding us all what life was like before we agreed to “run government like a business” and hand over the most sensitive tasks to whoever shows up at the day labor office.

[Officials] said that the three employees had access to the passport database for their jobs and had inappropriately accessed Obama’s information out of nothing more than “inappropriate curiosity.”

But they admitted that assessment was based on nothing more than the reassurances of the employees’ supervisors at the two outside companies. The officials said they don’t know the political affiliations of the individuals.

“No, no, these folks weren’t up to anything. Why Annie Rove and Bobby McCain and Wanda Clinton are just random employees with inquiring minds.”

Update: It looks like there could be a Clinton connection for real. Daily Kos:

This is what Hillary Clinton campagin said in a memo they released on March 12:

“As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?”

Now the question is, how did Hillary Clinton campaign know about the countries that Obama visited?

In the aftermath of the Obama passport breach something stinks in the Clinton camp.

Updated update! It just gets better! Now Secretary of State Condo Rice is saying someone took a look-see at Clinton’s files sometime in 2007.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday told Sen. Hillary Clinton that the security of her passport file were breached in 2007, according to Clinton’s Senate official…

The State Department will brief Clinton’s staff this afternoon, a statement from her Senate office said.

Updated updated update!! Now it’s McCain! Hilarity ensues!

An embarrassed State Department admitted today that the passport files of all three presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — have been breached by its employees…

State Department Secretary called Obama to apologize. She then had to call Clinton to apologize as well. And by noon, the department held a news conference to concede that McCain’s personal file had also been improperly accessed.

Florida Republicans have been flattering themselves since we got rid of Jeb with claims of how much everyone loves Gov. Charlie Crist. Everyone, they mean, including Democrats. Speaking for all Florida Democrats, which of course I can’t but that’s never stopped me, we aren’t feeling it.

Yes, we’re glad (giddy!) that Jeb is no longer in Tallahassee, trying to ram taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools down our throats; or privatizing state government by handing puffy, fluffy contracts to buddies, and in some cases, his brothers; or using standarized testing to remove the educational element from education. In fact, I pinch myself every now and then just to make sure I’m not dreaming.

And yes, we’re happy that Charlie says he cares about the environment, and how much we pay for homeowners insurance, and lots of other things that he has yet to do much about. He says the right words, and we like that.

But none of this means that if John McCain were to pick Charlie Crist as his running mate that we’d vote for them.

…a new Miami Herald poll shows that most Florida Democrats aren’t grabbing hold.

Eighty-one percent are unlikely to support the presumptive GOP nominee in November, according to the statewide survey of 600 Democrats.

An even larger majority — 87 percent — say their decision wouldn’t change even if McCain picked Republican Gov. Charlie Crist as his running mate.

McCain is widely viewed as needing to balance his ticket with someone younger. That shouldn’t be hard, since most people are younger than McCain.

“I know one thing about Gov. Crist and that is that he is a great governor and does a great job,” [McCain said.] I also know he committed to serve the state of Florida when he ran for governor of the state of Florida…He’s still a very young man.”

The shoddy treatment of Florida Democrats by the Howard Dean-led Democratic National Committee, not the choice of a running mate, is even more of a factor in this year’s election. Polls show that slightly more Florida Democrats are willing to vote for a Republican this time than they were in 2004, when Bush ran for re-election.

The 16 percent of Florida Democrats who say they might vote for McCain isn’t far off from the estimated 14 percent who supported Bush in 2004, when he won the state.