TAMPA — Florida Governor Charlie Crist didn’t have as bad a week
as Dede Scozzafava, the up-state New York RINO who pulled out of
the congressional race there because of increasing pressure from
the conservative independent candidate and his supporters. But
things are steadily unraveling for Crist, the Florida RINO who
wants to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 against conservative
former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio.
Crist’s problems aren’t confined to polls, though a new Miami
Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay
News 9 poll
indicates Floridians rate Crist’s performance as governor at
the lowest level in the 34 months he’s been in office. Just 42
percent of 600 respondents in a telephone poll conducted Oct.
25-28 rated Crist’s performance as good to excellent, while 51
percent rated Crist fair to poor. Not terrible, but for much of
Crist’s first two years in office he enjoyed approval ratings in
the sixties.
Even these mostly less-than-enthusiastic Floridians have a more
charitable take on Crist than Reihan Salam, a political columnist
for Forbes magazine who suggested last week that
Crist may be “America’s
worst governor.” Salam concedes that Crist is a gifted
politician. But in discussing Crist’s actual performance Salam’s
piece is full of expressions such as “opportunist,” and
“light-weight.”
Salam gigs Crist for various forms of “free-lunchism,” but
especially for being so wildly enthusiastic about president
Obama’s stimulus slush fund. He quotes the giddy way Crist spoke
to the Miami Herald about Obama’s
deficit-ballooning scam just a few months ago: “I think it’s
fantastic. Are you kidding me? We don’t have to raise taxes…. We
might be able to cut property taxes some more. We have more money
for education, so we can increase per-student spending. We can
spend more money on our roads and infrastructure. We can provide
health care for our people. I mean it’s remarkable.”
Those comments are indeed remarkable. How many conservative
Republicans are nearly so enthusiastic about the absolute healing
powers of “free” money from Washington? No one but Obama
fundamentalists believes the comically-specific reports, coming
out of Washington and Tallahassee, on how many jobs the stimulus
slush fund has supposedly created or saved.
Salam points out that Crist wanted the Florida Legislature to
rely on non-recurring federal slush funds for about 12 percent of
Florida’s budget. When the legislature passed a budget containing
some unpopular spending cuts, Crist vetoed hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of them. The final result was a budget
containing $2.2 billion in new state taxes and fees. After all
this Crist has tried to paint himself in speeches and political
ads as a fiscal conservative, a move that has gotten the
horse-laugh it deserves in Florida political circles and from
much of the Florida media.
The Forbes piece got wide play across Florida,
where several publications took up the criticism, pointing out
that relying on short-term manna from Washington to take care of
recurring expenses is remarkably similar to what that Italian
guy, Ponzi, got into so much trouble over.
We already knew that George Will has a couple of quid on Rubio in
the primary. In a column a few weeks back he outlined why the
conservative Rubio should and would beat the populist chameleon
Crist. On ABC’s This Week Sunday Will reiterated
his prediction that Rubio would win the nomination and defeat the
Democrat in the general, supporting his argument by pointing to
the increasing number of people who identify themselves as
conservatives, the decreasing inclination of Republicans to
support candidates who aren’t conservative, and the rightward
shift of independents.
The week was not without comedy. Crist has taken so much flak
from conservatives about embracing Obama’s slush fund, and Obama
himself, back when Obama’s popularity was in the stratosphere,
that he now avoids the less-appealing Obama like Dracula avoids
sunlight and the True Cross.
In February, when Obama came to Florida to whoop up his $787
billion goody-bag, Crist canceled a cabinet meeting to appear
with Obama in Ft. Myers. Crist didn’t mince words that day: “It’s
important that we pass the stimulus package,” he said while
standing on a stage with Obama in Ft. Myers. “We need to do it in
a bipartisan way.” Crist said the stimulus would “re-ignite our
economy,” as the members of the crowd, who had come to see Obama,
not Crist, shouted, “Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!”
Last week, with a considerably less popular Obama in Florida for
two days, Crist told reporters he didn’t even know Obama was in
the state when asked why he wasn’t playing Welcome Wagon again.
“Where was he?” Crist asked bemused reporters. “First I’ve heard
of it.” Clarifying later, in an attempt to hold down the
laughing, Crist allowed that he really knew the president was in
Florida. He just didn’t know his schedule. Nobody believed him.
Crist’s avoidance of Obama’s visit to the opening of a solar
energy plant in Arcadia is particularly noteworthy, as Crist has
whooped up alternative energy sources, going so far as trying to
get the Florida Legislature to oblige Florida utilities to
produce 20 percent of their electricity using “renewable” fuels,
and calling for a cap and trade program. This underlines what
Charlie observers have long known, and what more and more
Floridians are figuring out (see poll numbers above), that Crist
only cares about and backs up the policies he’s espoused when the
politics are right.
In addition to the drollery above, the campaign took on a bit of
the air of fraternity hi-jinks when an amateur-hour website
called TheTruthAboutRubio.com popped up and was quickly traced to
a Crist supporter (who claims he was out of town that weekend,
doesn’t know who Rubio is, and the dog ate his homework). The
site is full of sophomoric anti-Rubio material, making it
reasonable to wonder if someone in Crist’s shop studied political
campaigning on a Donald Segretti scholarship. If this is the best
contemporary dirty-tricksters can come up with, they should
probably limit themselves to ordering pizzas (no anchovies,
please) and sending them to Rubio headquarters.
There’s no cheering or high-fiving in Rubio’s campaign over these
developments (at least, they say there isn’t). Rubio continues
his heavy schedule of campaigning across Florida on conservatives
themes. He’ll probably take a few minutes this evening to check
the returns from New York 23. A victory there by the conservative
would be more support for Rubio oft-repeated campaign phrases,
“We don’t need two Democratic parties,” and “Conservatives don’t
need to apologize for or abandon their principles and beliefs in
order to win elections.”
Regardless of the results from the upper reaches of New York —
plenty of difference between a congressional district that
touches on Lake Champlain and a state that borders the Gulf of
Mexico — Rubio will remain the candidate who inspires Florida’s
conservative Republican primary voters. And a recent Rasmussen
poll shows that Rubio’s conservatism is apparently not too
astringent for the general, as he beats the likely Democratic
candidate, South Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek, by three
points more than Crist does.
For those paying attention to this race — and it has gotten a
lot of attention as a chastened, out-of-office Republican Party
tries to decide what it wants to be when it grows up — the
question now is, what will Crist and his campaign do to stop the
bleeding? Crist was an overwhelming favorite when he entered the
campaign. He adopted and has consistently followed an
above-it-all approach, ignoring Rubio. Now that there’s a real
race on, this approach will doubtless have to be revised. No one
knows yet what Crist will do next. But he has a lot of money to
do it with.
Don’t touch that dial.
