Frankly, I’m skeptical about the whole Rob Ford Caught With Pot in Florida story. It stinks to high heaven and not at all in the good way. That nice deep earthy, skunky way.

Firstly, I am not unfamiliar with the weed and have known my share of folks who are regular partakers. Never have I encountered someone of Ford’s personality trait who likes pot. At a party, they’ll wave an extended hand off, saying it doesn’t do much for them except make them sleepy.

Now, maybe there’s a laidback side to the man that very few of us get to see. Relaxin’ Rob, kickin’ it old school in FLA, wearing nothing but a speedo, blowing a doob and scarfing back pounds and pounds of shrimp cocktail.  Maybe, but I just can’t picture it. I just don’t want to picture it.

As has already been stated all over the interwebs, if Rob Ford were an illegal drug user, it would be a drug like coke. Crystal meth. Amyl nitrate poppers. OK, maybe not amyl nitrate. But then again, maybe. Whatever drugs it was that killed Chris Farley, those would be Rob Ford’s drugs of choice. If he were an illegal drug user.

Secondly, who broke the story and the timing of it are both highly, highly suspicious. Like the previous drug related pseudo-scandal involving Rob allegedly offering to illegally buy oxycontin for his new gay best friend, it was the Toronto Sun bringing us the pot tale. (Note the paper playfully chiding him as a Bad Boy.) By breaking this story now, the pro-Ford rag helped their candidate get out ahead of it, call himself yet another press conference to clear up yet another misstep, all well before election day when, hopefully, voters will have long since forgotten it.

More importantly, this minor blip of a controversy comes just 48 hours after Ford took his first real hit of the campaign during Tuesday night’s televised mayoral debate. When the topic of the Tamil “migrants” was raised, Ford stated that until we got our house in order and took care of the people who already live here we shouldn’t be going out of our way to welcome newcomers. Maybe it just came out the wrong way but no amount of spinning by the Ford people could totally obscure the fact that their guy might be a little bit of a xenophobic bigot.

Now, to his rock solid base — the Ford Army — his view on this was not just inconsequential but probably bang on. Everything the man says is bang on. In their eyes, Rob Ford can do or say no wrong. He could be caught strangling a baby while anally penetrating himself with a fuzzy puppy and they wouldn’t so much as blanch. That would just be Rob being Rob. What are you going to do? THE CITY DOESN’T HAVE A REVENUE PROBLEM! THE CITY HAS A SPENDING PROBLEM!! STOP THE GRAVY TRAIN!!!

The question is, however, is his base large enough to elect Rob Ford mayor on its own? One would hope in 2010 Toronto that wouldn’t be the case. Although we may be caught off-guard at just how many hillbillies we live amongst, they still aren’t plentiful enough to sweep Ford into office single-handedly.

So he has to reach out a little toward the right of centre. Not much, especially if the race continues as it is with these 5 front runners and 4 of them not having the devoted following that Ford has. Just 5-10% of those somewhat disaffected uncommitteds who feel overtaxed and underserviced and possess a streak of libertarianism in them. Those people still angry about having had to deal with their own garbage for 6 weeks last summer.

But when they hear Rob Ford being labeled as a mean-spirited bigot, they recoil. Ewww. That’s not right. John Tory would never say anything like that. And suddenly Rocco Rossi and Sarah Thomson begin to look like viable alternatives.

That is the sheer genius of the sudden appearance of the Rob Ford busted for pot and refusing a breathalyzer test in Florida more than 10 years ago story. It wipes the immigration gaffe right off the map and helps no one but Rob Ford. Given his history of boorish behaviour, it wouldn’t surprise me for a minute that he’s got hundreds of these things in his back pocket to use every time he says or does something that could seriously jeopardize his candidacy. With still 7 weeks to go in the election, he’ll probably have to use all of them.

I have now stopped thinking of the brain trust of Rob Ford’s campaign as mouth-breathing dunderheads who hold their daily meetings over hundreds of chicken wings at some Hooters. Whoever they are – and I still don’t see it being the candidate himself – they are proving themselves to be pure evil masterminds and should no longer be underestimated. For those who do not want to see Rob Ford as our next mayor, they have to ignore these insignificant diversionary tactics and continue to focus on all the real reasons he is unfit for the office.

— mellowly submitted by Urban Sophisticat