Growing brouhaha over departure of Romney's gay foreign policy spokesman

Yesterday we learned that Mitt Romney's openly-gay foreign policy spokesman, Ric Grenell, was stepping down in the face of withering criticism from the religious right.  We also learned that Romney had, oddly, refused to let the spokesman do any work for a good two weeks while the scandal brewed.  Nor did Romney do anything during that time to help shore up his embattled employee who was being attacked simply for his sexual orientation.

Today, former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer spoke out, publicly questioned why Mitt Romney seemed to have benched his own spokesman in the face of the anti-gay criticism.

I have to give a number of people credit for this story. First off, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post who did a great job getting Fleischer's input, which is important.  Second, Greg's conservative counterpart at the Post, Jennifer Rubin, who also did a great job breaking this story yesterday, and confirming that Romney seemed to be the one caving to the anti-gay pressure.  It's nice to see straight, and/or conservative, bloggers dogging a story important to our community.  (And I even have to give Fleischer credit for taking on the GOP candidate over an apparent anti-gay slight.)