“My ambition, if you will, my desire is to help our country in whatever role that may be, and I cannot predict what that will be, what doors will be open in the year 2012,” she told Barbara Walters.

When asked whether she’d play a major role, the former Republican vice presidential candidate replied that “if people will have me, I will.”

Palin is making the rounds to promote her new book, “Going Rogue,” which came out Tuesday. On Monday, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Palin said she’s gotten plenty of offers during the past few months, including to open up her family for a reality show, that she has rejected. She also said she wasn’t sure whether a talk show would be best for her family.

“I’d probably rather write than talk,” she told Walters.

The former Alaska governor said she’d rate President Barack Obama’s performance a 4 out of 10. She criticized the president for his handling of the economy and for “dithering” on national security questions.

“There are a lot of decisions being made that I – and probably the majority of Americans – are not impressed with right now,” she said on ABC. She said Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was “premature.”

Palin also discussed David Letterman, whom she criticized for a sexually suggestive jokes made at the expense of her teenage daughter in June. Letterman eventually apologized to Palin.

Palin told Walters she has ruled out an appearance on Letterman’s late night TV show. “I don’t think that I’d want to boost his ratings,” she said. “I do want him to sell my book, though I hope he keeps it up.”

The title of Palin’s book refers to a phrase John McCain’s campaign used to describe his vice presidential running mate going off message. In the book, she criticizes the people who ran McCain’s campaign and says she wished she had been allowed to speak more freely. But she told Walters the outcome probably would not have been different if she had.

“The economy tanked,” she said. “(The) electorate was ready, sincerely, for change.”

On the controversy about the $150,000 spent on her wardrobe by the campaign, Palin said there was a double standard: No one ever questions male candidates where their shoes or suits came from, she said. In the end, she added: “The clothes all went back. They were never my clothes.”

Despite the internal squabbling and ultimate loss, Palin said she would go through the experience again. “(I) would do it again in a heartbeat,” she told Walters.

And though she backed the first federal bailout, Palin says she would not support a second. “That did not put our economy back on the right track. So we learn from our mistakes.”

During her interview with Winfrey, which was taped last week, Palin said that it’s heartbreaking to see the road that Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, has taken and that the soon-to-be Playgirl model hasn’t seen his baby in a while.

The new memoir doesn’t mention Johnston, who has sparred repeatedly with his former mother-in-law-to-be. When Winfrey asked about Johnston, Palin said she didn’t think “a national television show is the place to discuss some of the things he’s doing and saying.”

But Palin went on to say she finds it “a bit heartbreaking to see the road that he is on right now” and that “it’s not a healthy place to be.”

Palin also said Johnston remains a member of the family and that they can work out any troubles. She said she prays for him and that he has an “open invitation” to Thanksgiving dinner.

Winfrey began the interview by asking Palin if she felt snubbed at not getting an invitation to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last year. Winfrey said she didn’t have any candidates on her Chicago-based show during the campaign because of her support for President Barack Obama.

Palin said she didn’t feel snubbed and told Winfrey, “No offense to you, but it wasn’t the center of my universe.”

In New York’s 23rd Congressional district, where longtime Republican Rep. John McHugh stepped down to be Army secretary, Dede Scozzafava, the candidate chosen by state GOP leaders to replace him, was forced out of the race by a surging Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. High-profile national Republicans endorsed Hoffman, saying Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, had abandoned core GOP values.

In the New Jersey governor’s race, independent Chris Daggett has gone from afterthought to player in a contest pitting the unpopular incumbent, Democrat Jon Corzine, against Republican Chris Christie.

Daggett is not expected to win the New Jersey contest, and the GOP split in upstate New York could throw the race to Democrat Bill Owens.

But the impact of those candidacies on the high-profile contests points to an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment that could be a prevailing theme in the 2010 congressional elections and beyond.

“What it says is the public is looking for less self-interested parties and candidates who can reflect the needs of a very frustrated public,” said Douglas Astolfi, a history professor at Florida’s St. Leo University. “We have two wars and we’re in a recession that neither party seems to address in any positive way. There’s a deep sense that government has abandoned the common man. People are frustrated and angry.”

Indeed, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released last week found that trust in government is at a 12-year low, and half of all Americans now support the creation of a new political party.

Both parties ignore such sentiment at their peril in 2010 and perhaps into the 2012 presidential race.

In Senate contests from Florida and Kentucky to New Hampshire next year, conservatives furious at the Republican establishment are mounting primary challenges against more mainstream candidates favored by the national party.

On the other side, Democratic strategists worry that progressives, disgusted by the big money bank bailout and disillusioned with President Barack Obama’s lack of fight on issues such as a government-run health insurance plan, might keep some people from voting. That could cost Democrats seats up and down the ballot.

Political operatives are keeping an eye on independent voters – an important and growing group that often decides elections. Will these voters send a signal to politicians Tuesday as well or will they stay home and leave it to the more ideologically driven base voters in both parties?

That was the case in the New York race, where polling found Scozzafava had fallen well behind her Hoffman and Owens, making it essentially a two-man contest days ago.

Sensing opportunity, ambitious conservatives across the country have jumped on the Hoffman bandwagon. The most prominent is Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and a potential high-profile contender for the White House in 2012.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, also looking at 2012, has announced his support for Hoffman. So has Chuck DeVore, a conservative California assemblyman hoping to run in a U.S. Senate primary against Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive backed by national Republicans to take on the Democratic incumbent, Barbara Boxer.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had endorsed Scozzafava, drawing the enmity of conservative bloggers scoffing at the possibility of a Gingrich presidential run in 2012.

Hoffman’s rise infuriated leaders of New York’s Republican Party, who insisted Scozzafava was a good fit for the district which favored Obama last year, but is one of the few still held by Republicans in the Northeast.

In New Jersey, Daggett, a businessman and former Environmental Protection Agency official, has appealed to voters who are turned off by both Corzine and Christie and fed up with the candidates’ campaign bloodbath. Daggett was widely believed to be the winner of a televised candidate debate and has been endorsed by The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the state’s largest newspaper.

John Weingart, associate director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, said Daggett’s candidacy had succeeded in giving disillusioned voters a competent and credible alternative to Corzine and Christie.

But Weingart said lack of money, the institutional obstacles to a third party candidacy and a growing awareness among voters of the ideological differences between Christie and Corzine would cause Daggett’s campaign to stall.

“To vote for an independent candidate, you have to believe either that the person can win or that there is no difference you care about between the Democratic and the Republican candidate,” Weingart said.

A Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday found Corzine ahead of Christie by a 43-38 percent margin with 13 percent for Daggett and 5 percent undecided. But a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of both Corzine and Christie.

In the 1992 presidential race, money wasn’t an issue for billionaire businessman Ross Perot, whose rise was powered by the same kind of populist anger brewing today. Perot vastly altered the dynamic of that contest, running as an independent and winning 19 percent of the vote.

Democrat Bill Clinton was the beneficiary of that three-way contest, taking away the presidency from George H.W. Bush with just a plurality of the vote. Clinton did so in part by adding a populist flair to his message, drawing voters who had been attracted to Perot.

Detachment from the major parties some of the success of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire who appealed to a city craving for competence in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.,

Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican that year, announced in 2007 that he would switch parties and become and independent, leading to speculation he would run for president at some point. Bloomberg is expected to cruise to a third term on Election Day.

The Rachel Maddow Show first aired on television in 2008.  She was first seen as a guest political analyst on MSNBC and CNN, and first heard on her syndicated radio show, The Rachel Maddow Show, in 2005.

Rachel Maddow was born in California and came out as a lesbian when she was a teenager. When in college at Stanford University, she was one of only two openly gay freshmen, according to her university paper.

At Stanford, Maddow majored in public policy and she was an AIDS activist.

In 1995, she received a Rhodes Scholarship to travel to Oxford for graduate studies at Lincoln College. She earned her doctorate degree in political science with a concentration in prison reform and AIDS.

The ringing endorsement for the 47-year-old Westerwelle, who is widely expected to be tapped for the high-profile post of foreign minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new government, in the Bild daily also highlighted his personal life in a way he rarely has.

“His man makes him so strong,” Bild wrote about Westerwelle, declaring that his 42-year-old partner Michael Mronz was not only his most important adviser during the campaign, but also “gives him security and … supports him when he suffers a setback.”

Despite eight years as leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, Westerwelle’s homosexuality has generated relatively little discussion. But with his party set to become kingmaker to Chancellor Merkel’s conservatives and him foreign minister, it has been thrust into the spotlight.

On Monday, a local official had to apologize for an anti-gay remark he made about Westerwelle on election night. Peter Langner, the city treasurer of the western city of Duisburg and a Social Democrat, had said that “I don’t want a gay foreign minister.”

Germans have been generally tolerant of openly gay politicians and others have paved the way, including Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who already declared back in 2001 that “I’m gay, and it’s good that way.”

While Westerwelle’s certainly no gay activist, he has said before that his lifestyle may be “encouraging for some young gays.”

“I can only tell all young gays and lesbians to not be disheartened, if not everything goes their way,” Westerwelle told the Berlin’s gay magazine Siegessaeule this month. “This society is changing for the good in the direction of tolerance and respect … though slower than I would wish.”

Westerwelle has been known to be gay since 2004, when he brought his partner to Merkel’s 50th birthday party.

“I’ve never been hiding my life,” Westerwelle said back then. “I just lived it.”

Mronz, who met Westerwelle in 2003 according to Bild, is an event manager who also organized the athletic world championship in Berlin this summer. He recently joined the Free Democrats, saying that after having listened to 120 speeches of his partner, “I am completely convinced.”

Westerwelle, who has led the Free Democrats since 2001, also spoke out for stronger civil rights during the election campaign and has criticized in the past that German law does not give complete adoption rights to gay couples.

The Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany welcomed Westerwelle’s victory and hoped his election would become a motor for gay rights in Germany.

“We think it’s awesome that it has become so normal that an openly gay man becomes foreign minister,” said Klaus Jetz, the head of the association, adding that the gay community expected him to advocate gay rights in Germany and abroad as well.

“It’s important that as foreign minister he will openly talk about human rights and the persecution of gays and lesbians in other countries.”

Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, suddenly speaking quietly. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening” and created a climate in which violence took place, she said.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted of the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.

During a rambling confession, White was quoted as saying, “I saw the city as going kind of downhill.” His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time. White committed suicide in 1985.

Pelosi is part of a generation of California Democrats on whom the assassinations had a searing effect. A resident of San Fransisco, Pelosi had been a Democratic activist for years and knew Milk and Moscone. At the time of their murders, she was serving as chairwoman of her party in the northern part of the state.

On Thursday, Pelosi was answering a question about whether the current vitriol concerned her. The questioner did not refer to the murders of Milk or Moscone, or the turmoil in San Francisco three decades ago. Pelosi referenced those events on her own and grew uncharacteristically emotional.

“I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made,” Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume,” she said.

“Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe,” she added. “But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.”

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for examples of contemporary statements that reminded the speaker of the rhetoric of 1970s San Francisco.

The public anger during health care town hall meetings in August spilled into the House last week when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama, the nation’s first black president, during his speech. On a largely party-line vote, the House reprimanded Wilson.

In a sea of American (and many Confederate) flags waved by more than a few secessionists, Obama was pictured as Hitler and portrayed as Stalin. The federal government was likened to an alien invader run by an illegitimate, foreign-born black president, who just happened to be elected by the American people.

I wish I could say that this unruly behavior is an anomaly, but it seems to be a growing and vocal part of the Republican Party. In the 1980’s, Rev. Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed used direct mail and talk radio to organize what were previously known as busybodies into the Moral Majority. Today’s GOP has harnessed the power of the Internet and cable television to lure the loons and create a constituency of crackpots.

The result has been disastrous for this nation. Our healthcare system is broken and we are rated near the bottom when compared to nearly every other industrialized country. We pay more per person for healthcare and we live shorter lives. There is instability, as families often go broke when a loved one falls ill and there is insecurity because losing a job means forfeiting coverage. American businesses are saddled with growing healthcare costs, which make it more difficult to compete in the global marketplace.

Yet, instead of an adult conversation about an issue that is crippling our nation, our dimmest citizens have derailed the debate. These out-of-control, severely under-medicated, surreptitious partisans hijacked town hall meetings and may cost the rest of us decent healthcare reform. Obama’s powerful speech last week helped mitigate the damage, but having frittered away the summer, it may be too late for the president to regain momentum.

At fault is the media – who routinely offer right wing sickos a stage to air the most outrageous allegations. Max Blumenthal, author of the new book, “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,” discussed the media’s culpability last week on National Public Radio.

“The mainstream media attempts this veneer of balance of entertaining both sides,” said Blumenthal. “But when one side is completely hysterical, conspiratorial, and leveling baseless attacks, should it be taken seriously? And what are the consequences for taking these attacks seriously in a democracy?”

The result, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is an explosion of militias and hate groups. In a new report, the SPLC documents at least, “50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers.”

“Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country,” says the report. The bizarre theories include:

1) Nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest

2) A secret network of U.S. concentration camps to imprison “patriots” who stand up to the federal government

If these were just harmless blowhards, that would be one thing. The problem is, these nuts are heavily armed and are a staple at shows that hawk firearms. SPLC reports that, “Sales of guns and ammunition have skyrocketed amid fears of new gun control laws, much as they did in the 1990s.”

Unless the media culture changes, there will be another Oklahoma City-type disaster or even an assassination attempt on our President. Responsible media outlets must stop offering platforms to serial distorters such as Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck. The next time Sarah Palin makes up a lie, such as death panels, the story should be about how she twisted the truth. Not a single story should be written or broadcast giving legs to the lies and allowing mistruths to run amok.

Thanks to the press winking and nodding to the nuts, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) felt empowered to heckle the President during his healthcare speech. More disturbing are reports that say many people in Wilson’s district applaud his sophomoric actions.

Clearly, it is time we stop calling these people “conservatives.” True conservatives, who believe in respecting authority and protocol, would have been appalled at the example Wilson set for children. After all, how can young people be expected to obey parents and teachers when the president is catcalled in the halls of Congress?

I’ve had it with such antics. This crowd destabilized Bill Clinton’s presidency. Then, they stole the 2000 election, by sending partisan thugs down to South Florida to disrupt the recount. Now, the paranoiacs are in a full-blown panic over the first black president.

This fight is no longer about healthcare, nor is about deficits. It is about the very health of the political process and turning back the deficit in decency exemplified by Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin and the demagogues out to undermine our system of government.

This frustration may lead to an embarrassing situation for the President, where former supporters mount the largest anti-Obama pep rally not fronted by Sarah Palin.

This week, an array of GLBT leaders expressed their dismay with the President by pulling out of a Democratic National Committee fundraiser. The action is in protest of a noxious legal brief submitted by the Department of Justice. It implausibly defended the heinous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by using anti-gay arguments that likely drew a standing ovation from Rev. Pat Robertson.

DOJ’s paper included a comparison of gay relationships to incest and opposed same-sex relationships on the absurd basis that it would cost taxpayers money (Don’t gay people pay taxes?). HRC also sent a pointed letter to Obama highlighting the betrayal felt by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

“I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings and as families when we read an argument, presented in federal court, implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones,” wrote HRC’s President, Joe Solmonese.

The deteriorating situation is exacerbated by confusion about who will push for equality. The Obama administration claims to be awaiting congressional action on a number of issues, including ending employment discrimination, eliminating DOMA and repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Harry Reid is waiting for Obama to act, as well as the House of Representatives. The GLBT community has become a hot potato that the Democrats do not seem to want to touch.

Aggravating matters was John Berry, the highest-ranking gay official in the administration. In an interview with The Advocate, he said that Obama’s timetable to enact his pro-gay campaign promises is “before the sun sets on this administration.”

So, now we have to wait 4-8 years, while watching him suck up to Rick Warren on Day 1?

For what seemed like forever, Democrats told us that when the big bad Republicans went away, our lives would improve. Well, the Republican nightmare is over, so why do I still feel like I’m in the middle of a political Friday the 13th movie?

The Democrats took our money, our votes and our volunteer hours and now they tell us to wait patiently, like good little gays. As far as I’m concerned, if the donkeys can’t deliver now, they can kiss my ass. The Democrats run the show in Washington and if they will not act like a majority party, then they do not deserve to be one.

This is not about making unreasonable policy demands, but about the Democrats recognizing the daily struggles faced by gay people. A new report by The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs said, “violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people increased 2% from 2007 to 2008, continuing the trend of a 24% total increase in 2007.”

Recently, I read about a lesbian who was barred from visiting her partner in a Fresno hospital, and as a result her partner received the wrong medication. Last week, I was in conservative Western Michigan where I spoke to young people who were nearly driven to suicide as a result of anti-gay attitudes.

We need a president who recognizes these evils and demonstrates the courage and leadership to enact the change he so eloquently promised during his campaign.

If Obama continues down the current path it will come at a steep price. When Bill Clinton settled for Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, it solidified the growing perception that he was “Slick Willie.” By turning his back on the gay community, Obama will play into the idea, stoked by Hillary Clinton and exploited by John McCain, that he is a man of beautiful, yet empty words.

What Obama fails to understand is that when poetry does not translate into policy, and hope turns hollow, the American people will begin to tune him out.

I’m still undecided about the wisdom of a march on Washington, but I am decidedly fed up with my political “friends” marching all over my dignity and taking my support for granted.  If the majority party does not cough up the votes to protect our families, we should close down our generous coffers.

For some reason I can’t get the murder at the Holocaust Museum out of my system. Killing in a place of learning is so out of bounds that it makes me reconsider my death penalty stance (even in this case I’m against it). However, now that the crime has become a political football, I would like to head to the hills with my books and Billie Holiday records and talk to no one.

People on either side of the aisle are now going through political contortions to describe James W. von Brunn as either a righty or lefty. Meh. Meh. Meh. One more time for emphasis. Meh.

One of the reasons American political culture is a tad bit crappy is our consistent attempt to score political points for our side, no matter the incident. Instead of simply describing him for what he is, a racist nut job, in a time of spin and the 24 hour news cycle, we pin von Brunn on our political opponents. Can’t get that talking head gig but simply saying he represents the crazy few. That’s not edgy enough!

This political hatchet game is useless but we play because it’s hard to believe that people on the other side of the debate are actually fair minded, and come to their political conclusions with the same passion and thought. Much better to act like your political opponent is beyond the pale and stew in some self righteous juice, preaching to a choir that simmers in the same broth.

We’ve forgotten there is such a thing as honest disagreement on the important issues of the day. Does it mean we should keep silent and not argue our points. No. No. It does mean a case of murder should not be turned into some stinking talking point so a pol you like wins the next election.

In the nation’s two marquee primary elections this year, Democrats in Virginia and Republicans in New Jersey selected moderate candidates for governor, rejecting people whose views were further left or right.

Certainly, it’s hard to draw conclusions about the country’s political mindset from just two races in just two states – primaries in which few voters participated, at that. But the results of Virginia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday and New Jersey’s GOP primary last week provide the only 2009 window into where voters in both parties may stand in Democrat Barack Obama’s first year as president and as the out-of-power Republican Party seeks to rebound.

The results are all the more noteworthy because primaries usually attract only the most motivated voters, typically people at the extreme ends of the political spectrum.

But in these cases, voters seemed to chose nominees who may give their parties the best chance of winning in November given each state’s political traditions. Moderate Creigh Deeds won the Democratic nomination in Virginia, which until recently has tilted to the right nationally, and moderate Republican Christopher Christie won the GOP nod in New Jersey, historically a left-leaning state.

Ideologically, each appears positioned to attract independents and moderates from the opposite party in the fall.

The races are shaping up to be bloody; Democrats control both states but Republicans sense opportunity.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine by law must leave office after one term. The three-way Democratic primary fight to succeed him was ugly – and expensive. Conversely, Republican Bob McDonnell, a conservative who is Virginia’s attorney general, had a clear path to the GOP nomination – and has a hefty bank account.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is seeking re-election and has the White House’s backing. But Republicans are buoyed by the fact that his support has tanked along with the state’s economy. Already, a series of polls has shown Corzine trailing Christie, a centrist former federal prosecutor.

“It sounds pretty consistent with the trends that we’ve been observing nationally – that the moderates have more sway these days than they did in the early part of the decade,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

He added: “Primaries tend to draw more of the party regulars who tend to be more ideological, either left or right. But these results would suggest that even the true-blue Democrats and true-red Republicans have more moderate impulses these days. Voters also are very pragmatic in times of trouble, and these results may reflect that as well.”

Kohut’s nonpartisan organization recently released a survey that found that the country is in the midst of an era of centrism and has experienced such a boost in independent voters that they now make up the largest proportion of the electorate in 70 years. The survey also found no evidence that the country has become more ideologically liberal or conservative, despite sweeping Democratic victories at all levels of government last fall and shrinking GOP ranks.

Still, the ideological extremes in both major political parties have been vocal.

Obama, who had a liberal Senate voting record but is trying to govern from the center as president, is facing resistance from his party’s left wing. At times, he has been at odds with the Democratic-run Congress spearheaded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Republicans lack a standard-bearer since George W. Bush left office. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a hero of the right wing, have emerged as the loudest voices in a debate over whether the GOP should adhere strictly to its conservative roots or broaden itself to attract followers from across the political spectrum.

In Virginia, Deeds, a state senator from a rural part of the Southern state, is moderate, if not conservative, on guns, gay marriage and the death penalty. He promised primary voters that he would govern much like centrist Democratic governors Kaine and former Gov. Mark Warner. In the end, he thumped two opponents who ran to the left of him.

They were a well-funded Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime Clinton confidant who modeled his campaign after Obama’s, and Brian Moran, a former state House Democratic Caucus leader who promoted liberal positions like reversing the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

Deeds is trying to become leader of a state that until recent years was long considered a Republican bastion. Last fall, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in a presidential race since 1964. And Virginia is now represented in the Senate by two Democrats, albeit moderates, Warner and Jim Webb.

In New Jersey, Christie had the backing of much of the GOP establishment and raised the maximum campaign cash allowed for the primary. He entered the race with nonpartisan rhetoric that sounded much like Obama. After a spirited contest, Christie easily dispatched Steve Lonegan, an ultraconservative one-time small-town mayor who pushed him to the right throughout the campaign, calling for massive state government layoffs, a ban on abortion and no business taxes. Less of a threat to Christie was conservative assemblyman Rick Merkt.

Christie is more moderate than them, though he has staked out conservative positions on school vouchers, abortion restrictions and regulatory issues. He also was nudged to the right on economic issues through the campaign, but is likely to tack back to the center as he tries to prevail in a state that has more registered Democrats than Republicans.

For years, moderate Republicans ruled in New Jersey. But, like in much of the Northeast, the GOP has sustained heavy losses in recent years, and Republicans see the New Jersey’s governors race – Christie’s candidacy coupled with Corzine’s unpopularity – as a chance to reverse that trend.

Then, a few weeks after Dick starting shooting the film in 2007, Idaho senator Larry Craig got caught tap dancing in a bathroom stall.  Dick had to hustle to keep up with it all.

“The story was put into fast-forward,” says Dick, whose previous films include This Film is Not Yet Rated and the Oscar-nominated Twist of Faith.  “With these scandals, the discussion of the closet sort of was swirling around us as we were making this film.”

The resulting documentary, Outrage, opened in five major cities last weekend and will go wide over the next few months.  So far, Dick’s been very heartened by the public reaction.  “No one has stood up and said, ‘I’m upset that you’re outing people’ which has surprised me,” remarks Dick.  “It seems like people really understand the argument of the film, the importance of reporting on this hypocrisy.”

365gay.com: What inspired you to make Outrage?

KIRBY DICK:  I was in Washington, DC promoting my last film, This Film Is Not Rated and I thought, ‘There must be a lot of great stories here.’  I started asking around and very quickly came upon this subject.  It’s fascinating, the psychology of these people who, in exchange for having a long political career, would live a double life.

A few days after I saw the film, I saw you interviewed on CNN.  The anchor Don Lemon seemed a bit offended that you were naming names, like it was rude or bad form.  I thought, ‘Did he see the same movie I saw?’

That’s what people have said when they watched it.  I actually want to give him more credit.  What I’ve found is it’s not the reporters themselves that don’t want to cover this story.  It’s the people up the ladder that have prevented mainstream reporters from covering this. I’m speculating but I think that’s what you were seeing reflected was the pressure he was receiving or he felt he would receive from higher up, rather than his own personal approach.

In your last documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, you exposed the double standard in the way the MPAA rating system deals with gay sex scenes versus straight.  Now, you’ve made Outrage.  Have you always had an awareness and interest in gay issues?

My best friend in high school was gay and we had all these discussions and then he had a group of friends who were also gay.  It really kind of normalized the whole thing for me when I was young and I’m very grateful for that.

In making Outrage, were you ever threatened or afraid for your safety?

We took precautions and we operated very much under the radar.  I have not received any threats.  However, in the process of looking into various politicians around the country, I spoke to a number of sources who seemed quite afraid to talk and in many cases, did not talk at all.  I don’t know if that fear was justifiable but I know the fear was real.

A number of people in your film comment on how gay Washington DC is, in terms of the people who work there and the whole vibe of the place.  Did you pick up on that?

Not initially but as soon as somebody pointed it out, yes.  I think my gaydar was always decent but it has been very refined by working in Washington, DC.

It must be a special kind of nightmare to be gay and work for a boss who legislates against you.

That’s what’s so horrible.  Take George W. Bush as an example.  He’s a person who’s not homophobic.  We’ve talked to gay people who are friends of his and some of his staffers are gay.  He’s totally comfortable but the fact that he would promote an amendment to restrict the rights of portion of the citizenry just to further his own reelection is appalling.

NEXT PAGE: What’s up with Charlie Crist?