"Charlie Crist had it right when he inked a deal with the Seminoles to cut taxpayers in on the tribe's gambling profits.

The casinos, after all, were already here, separating millions of willing gamblers from their money. All Crist did was allow them to take out a few hundred slot machines and replace them with some table games. In exchange, the tribe agreed to give Florida more than $100 million a year.

Everyone involved was a willing participant -- from the gamblers to the tribe. Floridians would finally get a cut of the rake.

But some of the allegedly family-values-promoting Republicans, such as former Speaker Marco Rubio, tried to block the deal. Gambling, it seemed, offended their senses of what was right.

That might have been believable if the Republican Party wasn't sucking up campaign donations from gambling interests.

When the casino debate was going full-bore in 2007, gaming companies funneled more than $840,000 into the Republican Party's campaign coffers during a three-month period alone.

That represented nearly one in every five dollars the GOP collected during that time."

Get the Story:
Scott Maxwell: Double-dealing: Sin-stained cash OK for GOP but not you (The Orlando Sentinel 1/25)

Related Story:
Florida Legislature fight looms over Seminole gambling deal (The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/26)