Amy Holmes - a GOP strategist, a former aide to ex-Republican Senate leader Bill Frist, and a talking head often seen on FOX News - made a couple of surprising revelations while co-hosting The View today: She is registered as an Independent and is adamantly pro-choice – even though she’s said she’s Republican in the past.

So, why does the Black Entertainment Television personality tout conservative values, while espousing some pretty liberal views in private?

“Because she quickly learned as an African American woman today what would be the quickest route to air-time,” an associate of Holmes told Big Head DC this morning. “She definitely wouldn’t have been hosting The View today, if she was a liberal.”

No party line, it seems, will hold the 33-year-old Holmes back in her quest for fame. She’s said in the past that she’d like to have her own television program like Charlie Rose, has appeared as one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful,” and, we’re told, worked her sources hard to score an appearance on Bill Maher’s program in April.

“I love photo shoots,” Holmes, who once dated the former Reliable Source writer Lloyd Grove, told her alma mater’s newspaper in 2000. “I understand now why celebrities get addicted.”

But who knew that becoming addicted to the GOP would get a gal everything she ever wanted?