TAMPA — Thanks to two events yesterday, the question of whether
Florida’s RINO governor Charlie Crist will run for the U.S.
Senate as an independent has gone from a long-running and
mildly-diverting speculation to a likelihood.
The exercise was always pointless. Crist already
is an independent, regardless of where he appears on the
ballot. He has about as much chance of defeating conservative
former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in the Republican
primary in August as I have of being selected Miss America. All
polls show him way behind Rubio. The most recent Rasmussen has
him losing to Rubio by slightly more than two to one.
Crist put an exclamation point to his lonesome end position
Thursday when he vetoed a bill passed by the heavily-Republican
Florida Legislature that would have eliminated tenure for new
public school teachers in Florida, based teacher pay on student
performance rather than on seniority and number of degrees in
education attained, and made it easier to fire incompetent
teachers. (See RiShawn Biddle’s fine
analysis of the bill in Wednesday’s TAS….)
Most of the Florida Republican leadership and the business
community backed the bill, which they saw as a serious attempt to
achieve some accountability in public education in Florida, a
$20+ billion industry that is far better at providing jobs and
security for teachers and bureaucrats, as well as dues for
teachers unions, than in teaching Florida’s children to read and
write. It’s a costly, underperforming, and over-staffed system
that badly needs to be shaken up. This bill could have been a
start in that direction.
Florida’s Democratic leadership, teachers, and teachers
union officials had a hissy-fit about the bill, as they always do
when attempts are made to pay teachers for performance or to get
rid of incompetent ones. Thousands of Miami-Dade County teachers
took the day off Monday to protest the bill. Students across
South Florida walked out of class to show solidarity with their
teachers (and to miss whatever work was on hand for the day).
Democratic candidates hammed it up.
As has become his pattern, Crist went with the Democrats,
and with where he thought (rightly or wrongly) the votes
are.
It’s not hard to follow Crist’s calculation on this one.
Before finally taking the veto decision — about which he had
been dithering for weeks, milking the last ounce of free
publicity from the issue — Crist had no doubt already read a
Quinnipiac poll released Thursday showing that in a three-way
Senate race, with Crist running as in independent, he leads with
32 percent over Rubio’s 30 percent and 24 percent for the likely
Democratic nominee, Miami Congressman Kendrick Meek. With this as
his only chance for political life after August 24, Crist no
longer has to even try to keep the Florida Republican Party
happy, or to stay in the fold.
I know, I know, Crist has said countless times that he
would stay in the race as a Republican. But Crist has never let
the fact that he’s said he would do one thing stop him from doing
something else if he thought it would benefit his
undistinguished, opportunistic, and ideologically androgynous
political career. It’s more than passing odd that a man who has
held four elected positions as a Republican, three of them
state-wide offices, should now consider running as an outsider.
But Crist has been more than a passing odd Republican.
There’s every reason to be skeptical of the new Quinnipiac
results. Other polls show Crist coming in last in the three-way
race and Rubio first. But it’s something for Crist to clutch at
after seeing his huge lead over Rubio disappear and then turn
into an embarrassing deficit.
Regardless of what the Quinnipiac numbers show today, it
seems likely Crist will not have the goods either side of the
political spectrum will be looking for in a U. S. Senator in
November. Florida Republican primary voters this year are looking
for a real conservative. A majority think they have found one in
Rubio. And Democrats will go for the real liberal deal this
November, which is Meek, an off-the-rack lefty who has voted the
straight Obama line.
Charlie-watchers have no trouble understanding why Crist
finds himself without a political team that really wants him. By
his own actions Crist has destroyed his credibility as a
Republican and a conservative, and there’s probably no way to
reclaim it now.
Though Crist occasionally trots out some conservative
rhetoric on the stump, Florida Republicans have noticed he has
not actually done anything conservative within easy memory. Au
the contraire. Since becoming governor in 2007 Crist has whooped
up expensive environmental schemes to require Florida utilities
to generate power using “renewable” fuels, urged that Florida
adopt California’s expensive auto fuel standards, and actually
issued an executive order establishing a carbon cap and trade
system in Florida to save us from global warming. Fortunately,
the Florida Legislature put an end to this fool’s errand. All of
these measures would have driven the cost of living up and
expanded government.
Most famously, Crist incurred the wrath of Florida
conservatives by supporting President Obama’s $787 billion
“stimulus” slush fund before it was adopted, undercutting the
efforts of other Republicans attempting to take on our economic
woes with tax cuts and less federal spending. Jeb Bush, Crist’s
predecessor as governor and still popular, called Crist’s
apostasy on this item of conservative faith
“unforgivable.”
There’s more. Crist last year appointed a liberal judge to
the Florida Supreme Court. In the spending area he’s not learned
his lesson. He’s put faith in such big-spending boondoggles as
high-speed rail, one of the most expensive way to travel on a per
passenger mile basis, to produce jobs and prosperity in Florida.
He’s chased after billions in federal education grants to study
new ways to teach Florida’s students, who learned more under the
old ways. Clearly Crist has no clue what the concept of limited
government means.
With the Florida Legislature looking for $3 billion to
balance the state’s budget this year, Crist sent a DOA proposed
budget to the Florida Legislature calling for hundreds of
millions in new spending for K-12 education, universities, and
environmental projects. Crist’s budget was rejected with the
horse laugh it deserved, and Republican legislators will have the
pleasure of explaining to Floridians looking forward to the new
boodle Crist proposed that the money isn’t there, as Crist knew
it wasn’t when he put together his sham budget.
Some Conservative. Some Republican. Crist’s 2010 campaign
claims to be a true conservative have about them the ring of Joe
Biden’s 1988 campaign claims to be a former coal miner. Biden at
least had the grace to step out of the race in ‘88 when his
fantasy was caught out. Crist should do the same this year but
almost certainly won’t. If he bowed out now and supported Rubio
against Meek he might have a slim chance of saving his political
career, of being able to run for another office another
year.
It appears now that Crist is going bare and hoping there
will be a big market for the mushy middle this year in Florida so
a cuddly but unfocused guy like himself can succeed as a party of
one. But listening to the loud and polarized political discourse
this year, it seems more likely that in November the only thing
to be found in the middle of the road in Florida will be
yellow-lines, dead armadillos, and Charlie Crist.
If Crist decides to run as an independent he will have to
declare himself by the April 30 filing deadline. None of your two
chances at grabbing the ring such as Joe Lieberman enjoyed in
Connecticut in 2006. It will be interesting to see what strategy
Crist adopts if he finds himself in a three-way.
Voters viewing the several series of Crist ads that have
hit Florida’s small screens can have no idea what Charlie Crist
would like to accomplish as a U.S. Senator and how he plans to do
it, because there’s nothing about this in these ads. The ads so
far have all been part of a scorched-earth, negative campaign
based on an attempt to convince Florida voters, with insinuation
rather than evidence, that Rubio is a villain who is enriching
himself through public office. Even liberal newspapers with no
love for Rubio (or any other conservative) have said Crist has
gone over the top in his charges against Rubio.
If Crist now has to start running against Meek as well as
Rubio, will he go after Meek’s ankles with as much gusto as he’s
gone after Rubio? And on the basis of what? Will we soon be
hearing dark suggestions that Kendrick Meek was on the grassy
knoll that day in Dallas?
Stay tuned. This one will be a doozy, whatever team, or no
team, Charlie Crist decides to be on.
