Question: Is Florida Governor Charlie Crist a Republican or a
Democrat?
Answer: Yes. Depending on what’s popular at the
moment. Just as one can estimate the time of day by watching
heliotropic plants as they lean toward the sun, one can tell an
election is nearing when Charlie “Rorschach” Crist starts
changing his positions, leaning in the direction of what’s
popular.
Taking a page from Flip Wilson’s Reverend Leroy, Crist belongs to
the Political Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.” He’s rotating his
political stock, to insure that the freshest ideas from polls and
focus groups are what he puts out front for the voting public.
This is easy enough for a politician who, as Crist has repeatedly
demonstrated, has no philosophical core beyond the core belief
that he belongs in high office.
As Crist now wishes to be a U.S. Senator from Florida, the public
he’s most interested in is Republican primary voters, who this
year are suffering from an acute case of RINO fatigue. The flavor
of the year is clearly conservatism. So a revision of Crist’s
recent political career, which has been at least as
Democrat-friendly as it has been conservative since Charlie was
handed the keys to Florida’s governor’s mansion in 2007, is much
in need if Crist is to prevail over conservative former Florida
House speaker Marco Rubio in an August primary. The latest polls
show Crist maintains a lead over the lesser known Rubio. But that
lead is disappearing faster than beer at a frat party.
Just a couple of examples of the new-improved Charlie, fresh from
the re-write department: Take President Obama’s $7.87 billion
stimulus slush fund (please). Crist didn’t just take money for
Florida from this failed policy after it was adopted, for which
he could not be criticized because the money would have been
spent somewhere anyway. He supported the policy before
it was adopted. He urged the members of Florida’s
congressional delegation to vote for it, and went so far as to
appear with Obama in Florida to whoop up the plan. He decided to
sign on with a popular Democratic rookie president and his
budget-busting plan at a time when other Republicans were
supporting an approach that included far less federal spending
and targeted tax cuts to stimulate the private sector.
Crist made his political bed last winter. But now that our rookie
president is not so popular (and is likely headed back to AA ball
after 2012, there to learn how to hit right-handed pitching), not
to mention that his spending-on-steroids plan has yielded little
more than mega-debt and promises of inflation to follow, Crist
wishes to sleep elsewhere. He now claims he didn’t advocate for
the policy, even though he’s captured on film multiple times and
places doing and saying exactly that. He says now he wouldn’t
have supported the policy had he been in the Senate and was just
looking out that Florida received its fair share of the federal
boodle. South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson could tell you what
this claim is.
In a curious twist last week, Crist’s new communications
director, one Andrea Saul, fresh from the triumph of being
director of media affairs for the John McCain presidential
campaign, tried to suggest that Rubio is a hypocrite for saying
that had he been governor last year he would have accepted
stimulus money for Florida.
Perhaps Saul is hoping Republicans voters aren’t nimble enough to
tell the difference between being willing to take money that will
be spent anyway and voting to spend the money in the first place.
But it will be a challenge to get Republican primary voters, who
tend to be more focused and informed than the run of general
election voters, to believe that it’s Crist and not Rubio who has
been the consistent conservative on this one.
Perhaps this sort of thing worked in the campaign of President
McCain, but …Oops, I guess it didn’t.
Another major Crist re-write is in the area of cap and trade. In
2007 Crist’s enthusiasm for this Soviet-style plan, beloved of
statists of all stripes, was hotter even that Al Gore says our
planet will be if we don’t turn the economy over to Washington to
run. Trying hard then to charm voters by being the un-Bush, Crist
set up a dog and pony show in Miami in July of that year called
“Serve to Preserve” (I don’t get what it’s supposed to mean
either) where he called together such climate experts as Robert
Kennedy Jr., and Arnold Schwarzenegger to indulge in a big public
worry over global warming, which Crist called “one of the most
important issues we will face this century.”
Once Ah-nuld had drawn a crowd, Crist went on to demonstrate how
dangerous the global warming issue can be, politically at least,
by issuing executive orders requiring Florida utilities to
generate 20 percent of their power using “renewable” fuels (i.e.
very expensive fuels that exist in trifling amounts) and
establishing a carbon cap and trade system in Florida.
Fortunately, the orders required enabling legislation from the
Florida Legislature, most of the members of which turned out to
be less easy to stampede than Charlie.
Comes now La Saul again claiming that the procedural legislation
Rubio helped get through the Florida Legislature which put the
kibosh on Charlie’s cap and trade order was in fact a cap and
trade bill itself, making Rubio a capper and trader.
Nice try, says Rubio, but no way. The bill he wrangled through
the legislature placed final approval of any cap and trade scheme
with the state legislature, where Charlie’s insane executive
order died unattended. Provisions in the bill put in by
Republicans also prevented the state from adopting California’s
strict and costly auto emissions standards, something else Crist
said back then that he fancied, without approval from the
legislature.
A Rubio op-ed in the July 25, 2007 edition of the Miami
Herald shows he was opposed to cap and trade from the
beginning. In it he says, “There is widespread support for
diversifying our energy portfolio and becoming more efficient in
our use of energy. However, efforts to accomplish these goals
must be based on common sense. Recently, Governor Crist issued a
number of bold and well-intentioned energy edicts. We should
applaud Governor Crist’s willingness to spend political capital
and tackling such an important issue. However the government
mandates he has proposed will not only fail to achieve their
desired result, they carry actual negative consequences. One
impact is an increase in the cost of utilities.”
While campaigning in 2009 Rubio has consistently opposed cap and
trade, saying it carries the potential of turning the U.S. into a
third world country. He says entrepreneurs rather than
politicians and bureaucrats will solve the country’s energy
problems and provide for our energy needs. No ambiguity here.
Charlie has cooled on warming, just as the American public has.
Not even the current global warming séance and rodeo in
Copenhagen has drawn Charlie out on warming or cap and trade. Jim
Greer, Florida Republican Party Chairman and a Crist dogsbody,
can’t even remember Crist’s cap and trade executive order.
At a Reagan Day dinner in Tampa in October, where from the podium
Crist tried to convince the faithful there gathered that he was a
lot like the beloved Gipper, Greer told me he “couldn’t find
where he (Crist) has ever said he supports cap and trade.” A
truly stunning remark. I wanted to take his knife and fork away
from him before he hurt himself.
But back to Charlie. After a couple of weeks of re-writing his
own history, claiming he never supported a disastrous policy when
he did, and trying to deny he supported a policy that he had
issued an executive order requiring, Crist then committed the
following howler on Friday (be sure to be sitting down for this
one).
While Crist was touring a medical facility at MacDill Air Force
Base in Tampa, a reporter asked him when he might debate Marco
Rubio. Governor Sunshine’s answer: “I don’t know that it would be
worthwhile because I can’t have any confidence in what he might
say. One thing comes out of his mouth and another thing is his
record. It’s hard to have any confidence in what he says
anymore.”
Wow! We have a new NCAA record for chutzpah. If there were an
Olympic event called the free-style knee-slapper, this one would
retire the gold. For Charlie Crist to say this requires more
brass than you’d find at a spittoon factory. I hope no one in the
ward Charlie was touring had a bladder infection. They would have
laughed themselves wet.
If, as may well happen, Florida Republicans deconstruct Charlie
before the August primary, thereby putting an end to his
achievement-free political career, he clearly has a promising
follow-on career in standup comedy. At least in this kind of work
he could be funny on purpose.
