TAMPA — Florida governor Charlie Crist will have to do something
soon. But what? He’s already tried to paint himself as a true
conservative. But this hasn’t worked because of the liberal
hobby-horses he’s ridden hard and put up wet since he’s been
governor — whooping up President Obama’s stimulus slush fund,
calling for cap and trade, et al. And he can’t run on his
accomplishments as Florida’s CEO because there haven’t been any.
He could go negative. But considering his opponent, this would be
tricky.
Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is, quite unexpectedly,
eating Crist’s lunch in the race for the 2010 Republican
nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat. Crist enjoys a
staggering 5 to 1 fund-raising advantage over Rubio, thanks to
his connections to establishment corporate, legal, and socialite
money. But thanks to Rubio’s conservative record and agenda in
what is stacking up as a conservative year, Rubio has the
momentum. Crist still holds a lead in the race, but his lead in
points has, like the autumn leaves, dwindled down to a precious
few.
Rubio has benefited from a growing disillusionment with President
Obama’s socialist agenda, an agenda Rubio is offering a clear
conservative alternative to. He’s also benefited from a movement
of Republican and independent voters to the right. Those
conservative Republicans will find him attractive in Florida’s
closed Republican Primary in August. And conservative
independents make Rubio a strong candidate in the general
election against a liberal Democrat (pardon the redundancy).
The latest Research 2000 poll, showing Crist leading Rubio by 47
to 37 (the same poll that last winter showed Crist ahead 57-4),
holds an even more astonishing statistic. It shows that 57
percent of the people polled have no opinion of Rubio, reflecting
the fact that Rubio still trails Crist significantly in name
recognition. Assuming this poll is anywhere near accurate, this
means a remarkable percentage of people who know about Rubio
support him. The more he becomes known, as he inevitably will
when his grass-roots retail campaign adds a media wholesale
dimension next year, the better his numbers will be.
This is why the Crist campaign has gone to general quarters,
taking on a new campaign manager, a new press spokesman, and
hinting darkly that a more aggressive Charlie will soon emerge,
one who will unmask that conservative pretender Rubio.
“Be still, my heart,” seems to be the Rubio campaign reaction. “I
think Charlie Crist is desperate,” Rubio said to Fox news. “He
has a serious credibility crisis. Desperate people do desperate
things. But for us it’s not a problem.”
The next few months will tell how big a problem the Crist
campaign can be for Rubio. But for now it seems that conservative
is good in a Republican primary, and Rubio has the conservative
goods more than Crist has.
So far, the anti-conservative charges and specifications the
Crist camp has tried to pin on Rubio are pretty lame. They
include: Rubio did not vigorously support a Florida law that
allows workers to have guns in their cars and trucks at work when
parked on company property and so he’s therefore weak on the 2nd
Amendment, Rubio spent state money after becoming speaker of the
Florida House on remodeling House offices and paid his press
secretary too much, and he was insufficiently vigorous in
opposing illegal immigration into Florida.
It’s going to be hard to make any of these stick. Rubio has
always had an A rating from the national NRA. And Crist himself
had problems with the guns-in-the-parking lot law because it goes
crosswise with another important right, the property rights of
business owners.
Rubio claims most of the money spent to improve Florida House
facilities was for asbestos removal, not cosmetic improvements.
Rubio’s press secretary did have a high salary, and perhaps Rubio
could have gotten this kind of help for less. But a press
secretary’s salary hardly seems like a kill-shot.
Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba in the 1960s, has a clear position
on immigration, which calls for strict border control. Crist
opens up his own vulnerability if he hams it up on this issue
because he supported the McCain/Kennedy “We Don’t Need No
Stinking Borders Act of 2007.”
Crist has not had a record of going negative in previous
campaigns. He’s always been a smiler, not a fighter. But then
he’s never been in a race like this one against a candidate like
Rubio. Crist’s career to this point has been much like the early
career of Mike Tyson, so many first round knockouts there has
been little chance to learn critical ring skills. Rubio could be
Crist’s Buster Douglas.
A good shoeshine, a tan, a smile, and “It’s a beautiful day in
Florida” won’t be enough to win this one. And some of Crist’s
previous campaigns have amounted to little more. If the Crist
campaign does go negative, it won’t be Charlie himself dishing
the dirt, but his underlings, as in the juvenile anti-Rubio
website that was popped up last month.
The risk of going negative for Crist is that it would further
alienate the conservative base that is critical in a Florida
Republican primary. At the end of the day, there’s no way Crist
wins a conservative bona fides contest with Rubio. And going
negative also risks alienating still-popular former Florida
governor Jeb Bush, who has yet to endorse or campaign for his old
South Florida pal, Rubio. A recent poll shows an overwhelming
majority of Florida Republicans would rather have Jeb still their
governor than Charlie. The last thing Crist wants is Bush as a
member of Team Rubio.
While Charlie continues to get blue, Rubio’s campaign is still
enjoying successes. His most recent coup was being chosen as the
keynote speaker for the 2010 Conservative Political Action
Conference to be held in Washington in February.
“We chose Rubio because he’s an up and coming leader,” said CPAC
Director Lisa de Pasquale. “He’s someone a lot of people are
excited about.”
The three-day CPAC conference each year is probably the largest
gathering of conservative officials, media, and money-types in
the country. And the coveted opening day, 10 a.m. speaking slot
is a plum. No better place or way for Rubio to put his
conservative credentials before the conservative world. He joins
a pretty select group of former CPAC speakers which include Dick
Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, George
Will, Tony Snow, and an obscure former western governor named
Ronald Reagan.
With exposure through groups like CPAC, and the Club for Growth,
which has endorsed Rubio, along with kind words from many of the
nation’s leading conservative pundits and publications — George
Will has flatly predicted Rubio will be Florida’ s next senator
— Crist’s attempt to portray himself as the true conservative in
this race appears to be Sisyphean.
If going negative on Rubio is a high-risk strategy, Crist might
be better advised to consider actually putting together a
conservative agenda for Florida and trying to govern based on
that agenda. On the evidence of Crist’s first two years as
governor, this isn’t likely. Au the contraire, Crist has shown,
after seeking it, no real taste for the governor’s job.
Crist has held a very light hand to the tiller of Florida’s ship
of state in his first two years. His calendar, showing him absent
about as many days as he’s been on the job, has gotten extensive
coverage in Florida media. Certainly over the last year he’s been
more of a campaigner than a governor, jetting off to Washington,
New York, Arizona, Las Vegas, and California for fundraisers,
even designing his Florida schedule around fundraisers and such
ribbon-cutting events that get him free media.
Crist knows how to grip and grin. But his footprint on Florida
governance is pretty shallow, even though he’s quick to take
credit for such positive things the Florida Legislature has
managed to achieve while he’s been governor (often in-absentia).
Anyone wishing to be greeted with silence could ask a group of
Florida political insiders what Charlie Crist’s agenda is for the
next regular session of the Florida Legislature.
It’s not that Florida doesn’t have serious problems. Florida’s
unemployment rate is now 11.2 percent, the seventh highest in the
nation. If Crist has the first idea about what to do about this
he’s kept it hidden. Florida faces a budget deficit of at least
$2.6 billion next year. No word yet from Crist how to deal with
this either.
So there’s no mystery about why Crist would like to leave the
difficult job of being governor of a large, complex state with
real problems for the relative obscurity of the Senate, where
responsibility is diffuse and there’s no pesky constitutional
requirement of a balanced budget, as Florida has. Unlike Rubio,
Crist has never told Floridians what he would like to achieve in
the U.S. Senate. We only know he would like to be there. Voters
paying attention are entitled to conclude that in Washington he
would mail it in or sub it out, as he has in Florida.
Even with Florida’s many pressing issues, Floridians who don’t
attend Crist fundraisers see little of him. If he were elected to
an office in Washington, Floridians might never see him again. To
Florida conservatives this prospect holds a certain amount of
charm. But this doesn’t stop most of them from supporting Rubio.
