TAMPA — You just can’t have a Marco Rubio in every election
cycle. That’s too bad for conservatives.
Florida’s Republican junior U.S. Senator, Rubio is the
articulate conservative who came from obscurity to defeat Florida’s
sitting governor and a no-name Democrat for the Senate seat in
2010. When Rubio entered the race in the spring of 2009 the
political “experts” and the Republican establishment first yawned,
then said he had no chance. The entire Republican establishment
went kissy-kissy all over the rudderless political wind-sock,
Charlie Crist, who didn’t even remain a Republican until Election
Day. Rubio won by 20 points. He’s in the U.S. Senate while Crist is
a now pitch-man for a large personal injury law firm. At least
Crist finally found his métier.
Hardly oriented yet to the Senate office buildings, rookie
Rubio is on every Republican’s short list for the VP spot on next
year’s ticket. Though he may also be on the even shorter list of
people who’ve said they don’t want to be vice president and really
mean it.
Rubio is smart enough, informed on all the issues enough,
clear enough in his conservative view of the world, and forceful
enough in his willingness to engage in the name of those
convictions, that he has a real prospect of being at the top of a
Republican ticket one day if that party decides to remain
conservative. He just doesn’t have the genes of a second banana and
likely doesn’t want to spend the next eight years handing guests
their coats after state dinners, going to the funerals of foreign
humbugs, and inquiring after the president’s health.
This cycle conservatives have a real opportunity to
replace a liberal Senate Democrat who has voted with Barack
O’Barnum more than 90 percent of the time, including supporting
such leftist hustles as cap and trade, Obamacare, and the debt
stimulus package of 2009. This would be one Bill Nelson, 69,
seeking his third Senate term. The Florida left-stream media insist
on referring to Nelson as a “moderate,” but this says more about
the Florida media than about this transparently liberal Senator who
holds countless left-wing positions, and has voted for a host of
liberal measures, that a majority of Florida voters just don’t
fancy.
Nelson, who served in the U.S. House and the Florida
Legislature, as well as doing a hitch as Florida’s Insurance
Commissioner, before winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2000, has been
in public office since slightly after the Crimean War.
Polls have varied so far, but most show about a third of
Florida voters have a favorable opinion of Nelson, about a third
unfavorable, another third have no opinion of Nelson or have never
heard of him. He’s clearly not made much of an impression for a guy
who has been in office since before a fair fraction of Florida
voters were even born.
Nelson’s nickname isn’t “Lucky,” but it should be. He’s
held office far more because of what Republicans haven’t done, than
what he, Nelson, has. What the Republicans haven’t done is put up a
strong candidate against Nelson. In 2000 Nelson ran against former
Congressman Bill McCollum, a smart, decent, conservative, and able
man, but one of the few politicians in Florida as
charisma-challenged as Nelson. In 2006 Nelson matched up against
the politically radioactive Katherine Harris, the former Florida
Secretary of State Democrats still accuse of stealing the 2000
Florida presidential vote for George W. Bush, and who put together
a short but undistinguished career in the U.S. House before trying
to jump to the Senate.
Will Bill Nelson get another batting practice fastball to
swing at in 2012? Will he once again not have to pay the price for
his liberal career? Events to this point are not encouraging for
conservatives.
With the exception of Craig Miller, an Orlando area
restaurateur, the gang of five (recently expanded from four)
seeking the Republican nomination have spent as much or more time
calling their Republican opponents one or more species of a
no-account than they have talking down Nelson. The Republican race
more and more has the appearance of a circular firing
squad.
Realizing that conservative is the preferred flavor among
the Republican base this cycle, the candidates are competing
mightily with each other for the mantle of the real and true
conservative in the race.
Former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner has
garnered some support from state and national conservative groups
and figures. But opponent George LeMieux, appointed by Crist to
serve the final 16 months of Mel Martinez’s Senate term, has dug up
campaign literature from previous races where Hasner claimed to be
a moderate.
Hasner retorts that LeMieux has some esplainin’ to do for
his career as liberal governor Crist’s campaign manager and chief
of staff. While LeMieux was Crist’s major domo Crist held just
about every position known to man on every issue, including some
quite liberal stuff like attempting to put Florida under a carbon
cap and trade regime and whooping up O’Barnum’s trillion dollar
stimulus slush fund. Plant City tree farmer and retired Army
Reserve and National Guard Colonel Mike McCalister has joined in
the chorus against “political insiders” who’ve caused the mess
we’re in and who can’t get us out of it.
Fort Myers Congressman Connie Mack IV, son of former U.S.
Senator Connie Mack III (grandson of Philadelphia Athletics owner
and manager for life, Connie Mack), recently jumped into the race,
after saying earlier in the year that he wouldn’t run because he
wanted to spend more time with his family.
Mack’s change of heart almost certainly is not because his
family has become less attractive over the last few months, but
because Florida Republicans have found the Senate field and the
campaign to this point unedifying and uninspiring. Though it’s not
clear what Mack — who has had some snarky things to say about the
Arizona anti-illegal immigrant law, who takes global warming more
seriously than he should, and who supported Crist in the 2010
Senate race — brings to the table that the Republican base wants
to hear.
Most of these candidates have been campaigning for months.
In center-right Florida, where voters self-identify themselves as
conservative over liberal by two to one, there should be some
interest in these folks. Not yet. Most polls show Nelson winning
against all of them. Invariably “none of the above” is the most
favorite candidate in polls of the Republican pack.
If one of these doesn’t separate himself from the field
and make a solid case for himself, Florida may well be represented
in the U.S. Senate for six more years by a mediocre politician well
to the left of the state’s electorate. And the conservative cause
will have failed where it should prosper.
In 2010 Marco Rubio electrified Republican voters. There’s
a year left before the election, but so far this cycle there has
been a power outage on the Republican side.
