TAMPA — The candidates for the Republican U.S. Senate
nomination in Florida clearly believe red-meat conservatism will be
the favored flavor among R primary voters in 2012, as it was in
2010. They’re probably correct.
Whether unapologetic conservatism is the key to beating
liberal Democratic (pardon the redundancy) incumbent Bill Nelson in
the general election is still unclear. In the few polls taken so
far, “generic Republican” is competitive against Nelson, while the
four actually running don’t do so swell. But it’s early.
In 2010 former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, now U.S.
Senator Marco Rubio, came out of right field to beat the
establishment’s candidate, formerly popular Florida Charlie Crist,
by 20 points. He was the most conservative state-wide victor
Florida has seen in several cycles. Three Republicans won cabinet
posts in 2010 pushing conservative agendas. The state’s U.S. House
delegation became more R, a one-sided 19-6 majority now for the
GOP. Bite-your-ankles conservative Republican Allen West even
defeated a Democratic incumbent in limousine-liberal Palm Beach
County.
Republicans eager to strap on Nelson include Florida
Senate President Mike Haridopolos, former U.S. Senator George
LeMieux, and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner.
Orlando area steak-house restaurateur Craig Miller, oh-for-one in
congressional races, says he’ll decide soon whether to add his name
to the Senate menu. Mike McCalister, a Tea-Party friendly retired
Army colonel, has also thrown his hat in, but showed little ability
to attract votes or attention in his 2010 race for
governor.
Depending on how much 2012 turns out to be like 2010,
these candidates are either fighting the last war or telling
primary voters what they’re eager to hear. So far, not many
Floridians are focused on the Senate race or the presidential
sweepstakes. In all the polls in both races the most favored
candidate now is a guy named “Undecided.” This will give way as
summer fades to fall and we’re looking down the barrel of the Iowa
caucuses and the first primaries.
So far Hasner appears to have a lead in the race to be
crowned the real and true conservative. In a campaign that mimics
Rubio’s 2010 race both in ideology and strategy, Hasner is
crisscrossing the state highlighting the urgency of cutting federal
spending and regulation and following a strong foreign policy based
on defending America’s security interests. He was the first of the
candidates to endorse the Ryan plan for dealing with
Medicare.
Just as Rubio’s 2010 campaign attracted the support of
Florida and national conservative household names, bagging almost
all of them well before Election Day, Hasner so far has collected
the endorsements of conservative broadcasters Monica Crowley and
Mark Levin, Red State’s Erick Erickson, and Pass the Balanced
Budget Amendment Chairman Ken Blackwell.
LeMieux is angling to get back to Washington. He was
appointed by former Florida Governor Charlie Crist to serve the
last 16 months of the term of Mel Martinez, who resigned from his
Senate seat in August 2009. During LeMieux’s short time in
Washington he compiled what the ideological rating agencies deem to
be a conservative voting record. In his campaign so far LeMieux has
criticized Obama and Nelson for incontinent federal spending and
for socialist overreaches such as Obamacare. When Crist broke wide
left and became an independent during the 2010 Senate race, LeMieux
made a clean and complete break with Crist and endorsed
Rubio.
But it won’t be easy for LeMieux to rid himself of the
Ghost of Charlies Past. LeMieux says he rejects the leftist stands
Crist took in the Senate race and before, including Crist’s 2007
attempt to saddle Florida with its own cap and trade system. But
his opponents claim that LeMieux, who was Crist’s chief of staff
for years, was in fact the architect of these liberal
positions.
To the extent that 2012 is still a Tea Party year, and if
it’s still an advantage to be an outsider, LeMieux will have to
deal with the image of a Washington insider. Thursday a clutch of
U.S. Senators, including John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of
Maine, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Pat
Roberts of Kansas are throwing a fund-raiser at The Monocle in
Washington for LeMieux. Another sponsor of the event is Pete
Rummel, finance chairman of Bob “Bob” Dole’s direction-less 1996
presidential campaign. Can you get any more establishment than
this?
Haridopolos has compiled a mostly conservative record
during his years in the Florida senate. Under his leadership this
year the Florida senate helped deal with a $4 billion deficit in
Florida’s budget. The current spending plan eliminates 4,000 state
workers and obliges the state’s government school teachers to pay
three percent toward their retirement. Way less than folks in the
private sector must pay, but three percent more than Florida’s
well-compensated government teachers were paying.
But Florida conservatives sniff that Haridopolos got far
less than he could have, considering the Florida Legislature is 2-1
Republican and the governor and all cabinet members are Republican.
His opponents particularly like to point out that Haridopolos was
unable to get any meaningful immigration legislation.
Being senate president, and Haridopolos will continue in
that post in 2012, means he will have little trouble raising
campaign cash. In the first reporting quarter Haridopolos hauled in
$2.6 million.
In a perfect world it wouldn’t matter, but though
Haridopolos is 41 he looks 25 and sounds 16. He has a high-pitched
voice that is so squeaky it sounds like his nickname should be
“Sparky.” He can’t help this, and it’s not fair. But these things
might cost him a few points. If he were running for student-body
president he would be perfect.
So these are the guys against Nelson, who should be
vulnerable. Nelson has voted for cap and trade, Obamacare, and all
of the other left phantasms that Floridians consistently tell
pollsters they don’t fancy. He doesn’t wear a Mao jacket to work,
but he may as well. Any one of the Republican candidates would
compile a much more conservative record than Nelson has in his two
terms in the Senate.
But it won’t be easy. Nelson is a low-key fellow who
speaks with a disarming, good-ole-boy drawl. Florida’s left-stream
media insist on referring to him as a “moderate.” Looking at
Nelson’s voting record, Floridians are entitled to wonder what it
would take to earn the title “left-wing geek.”
Sharon Day, co-chair of the RNC and Florida’s Republican
Committeewoman, told me, “There should be some price to pay for his
[Nelson’s] votes. We’re living with the results of those votes now.
There needs to be some accountability.”
Do these Republican candidates, singing from the
conservative hymnal, mean what they say or are they just tuned in
to polls and focus groups? Floridians will get a clearer picture of
this in the 14 months before the state’s primaries, and nearly 17
to the general election. But the success of any one of these would
almost certainly move Florida politically to the right and help
stave off what Florida conservatives refer to as the dreaded purple
disease.
