Serious subjects — energy for Florida’s and America’s future,
national security, and protection of Florida’s shorelines — will
stand little chance this week in Tallahassee against a profoundly
unserious matter, the continuation of Governor Charlie Crist’s
(I-Charlie) political career.
Crist, Florida’s former RINO governor who made the obvious
official in April when he left the Republican Party to run for a
U.S. Senate seat as an independent, last week ordered up a
special session of the Florida Legislature to begin Tuesday to
consider a constitutional amendment banning near-shore oil
drilling in Florida waters.
The ban, which there’s serious doubt the heavily Republican
Florida Legislature will vote to put on the November ballot,
would be redundant. Florida law has banned drilling in Florida
waters within 10 miles of the coast since 1990. In any case, had
the ban Crist is calling for been in place in April it would not
have prevented the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, which took place
far from shore in federal waters.
The only purpose of the expensive session and the pointless
amendment would be to make it appear that Crist, who has visited
every beach in the state to appear concerned before television
cameras but beyond this has exercised no leadership in the
current Gulf oil crisis, appear to be doing something to protect
Florida (read Florida voters).
Crist has put no pressure on the federals to mobilize more
skimmers or other equipment to protect the beaches and littorals
he claims to care about. In fact, he’s the only Gulf governor to
describe the Obama administration’s flaccid response to the oil
spill as “a good job.” He’s recommended no economic policies to
assist Floridians damaged by the spill. His only response to BP’s
Deepwater Horizon spill has been a near continuous photo-op. The
special session promises to be more of the same. At least one
Republican Florida legislator has filed a resolution to censure
Crist for calling the useless
session.
The call came a day after a poll (Rasmussen) showed Crist
trailing conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio by
two points in the Senate contest. Those of you who think this
sequence is a coincidence really need to get out more. (Crist
leads Rubio by a few points in other polls.) Florida
Republican legislative leaders have called Crist’s move a
political stunt and may well adjourn shortly after the session
begins without taking any
action.
Florida legislative leaders as well as a fair fraction of
Florida’s print and broadcast media have gigged Crist for this
transparent grandstanding. For most politicians it would be easy
to predict that a ham-handed move of this sort would do them more
damage than good. But the mercurial Crist, who has flip-flopped
on so many issues (including drilling in the Gulf) he makes John
Kerry seem a study in consistency by comparison, has gotten away
with countless cynical political acts in a long and
achievement-free career.
Crist doubtless hopes that this scam is one in which he
wins either way. If legislators adopt his pointless and
inappropriate amendment (state constitutions should be broad,
general frameworks for government, not a hodge-podge of rules on
specific matters that should be dealt with as legislation), then
they’ve followed Crist’s leadership. If they reject it they are
in the pocket of Big Oil and don’t care about Florida’s
environment.
Indications are most Floridians are smarter than this.
While Crist doubtless owns no BP stock, he’s making every effort
to collect political dividends from BP’s spill. As Rahm Emanuel
has taught the political opportunists of the world, among whose
number close political observers have long numbered Charlie
Crist, one should never let a crisis go to waste.
Politically, the BP spill is probably the luckiest thing to
happen to Crist this year. In the absence of it his final
lame-duck months as governor would be pointless and media-free.
He would have had to spend a lot of campaign cash to get his face
on the tube. As it is he’s on television every day, looking
concerned, and telling Floridians how much he loves them and how
he’s determined to save them from an evil, polluting oil
industry.
For now the cap on BP’s offending wellhead is holding and
no more oil is gushing into the Gulf for the first time in 12
weeks. No one has yet found a way to cap Charlie Crist’s
ambition, cynicism, and opportunism. It continues to pollute
Florida politics, and takes attention away from real challenges
Florida government should be trying to deal with. Like how to
clean up all that oil and how to ensure that Floridians who’ve
been damaged by this disaster are helped.
While the photo-ops were going on, Crist managed to collect
$1.8 million in campaign contributions for the quarter ending
June 30, mostly from Democrats who hold out little hope for the
two sad-sack candidates competing for that party’s Senate
nomination. This is more than the $1.1 million Crist collected in
Q1, his last quarter masquerading as a Republican. But it’s way
less than half of the record-setting $4.5 million that Marco
Rubio, campaigning on a consistently conservative platform,
pulled in during Q2, mostly in small amounts from
individuals.
Considering Rubio’s grass-roots support, as demonstrated by
his campaign haul, it’s no wonder Crist worries about how long
his slender lead in this race will last. He’s counting on this
week to help his cause. He may be disappointed. He should
be.
