TAMPA — While Republicans are waiting for enough of a break in
the weather to put on a nominating convention here, former Florida
Governor Charlie Crist is using the opportunity to try to weasel
his way back on to the public stage. He will only succeed if the
Florida Democratic Party’s bench is really weak.
To the surprise of no one who follows Florida politics,
Florida’s former Republican governor Charlie Crist has announced
that he’s endorsing Barack Obama for president. It’s too soon to
tell if this endorsement will prove helpful to either
politician.
This announcement, and his previous announced support for
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson for re-election, are almost
certainly part of a sequence in which Crist re-registers as a
Democrat (a logical enough next step for a chameleon like Crist,
he’s already been a Republican and an independent) and then seeks
the Democratic nomination to run against Florida’s current
Republican governor Rick Scott. Scott won the governorship by an
eyelash in 2010. And while many of his policies are popular with
Floridians, Scott personally is not. He’s vulnerable.
The liberal Crist chose Florida’s most liberal newspaper for his
announcement. In an
op-ed piece in the Tampa Bay Times (the publication
formerly known as the Saint Petersburg Times) that is
alternatively puzzling and vaporous, Crist spells out, sort of, his
purported reasons why he backs our rookie president for a second
term. Here’s Charlie’s take on how Obama dealt with the nation’s
deep troubles when inaugurated in 2009:
The president’s response was swift, smart, and farsighted. He
kept his compass pointed due north and relentlessly focused on
saving jobs, creating more, and helping the many who felt trapped
beneath the house of cards that had collapsed upon them.
Clearly something collapsed on whoever wrote this remarkably
a-historical bit of nonsense, or he/she simply inhabits a parallel
universe. But this sort of thing has been typical of Crist’s long
but achievement-free political career — happy talk over substance
and reality. Crist’s principal political asset is a big smile and a
cheery disposition, at least when talking with voters. He hardly
ever utters a harsh word on the campaign trail. Though, as we see
in this Times piece, he does utter a good many foolish
ones.
In his 14 paragraph screed, Crist hits most of the Democratic
talking points. Republicans are on the “extreme right,” wrong on
issues “important to women,” and their policies make life difficult
for immigrants, seniors, and students. In the first paragraph of
Crist’s op-ed there is a head-scratcher about “the failure of those
who favor extreme rhetoric over sensible compromise.” I assume
readers are to conclude that Romney and his Republican henchmen are
prone to extreme rhetoric and Obama is the Great Compromiser,
though if Obama has ever compromised with Republicans on anything
in his career, Crist doesn’t mention what it is.
Crist was a Republican when he was governor, and while he held a
string of offices before gaining the state house, though an
increasingly liberal one as the years went by. In 2010, as a
sitting governor, Crist was unable to convince conservative
Republican voters that he was the conservative to carry the
Republican flag in the U.S. Senate race.
When polls made it clear in the summer of that year that Florida
Republicans much preferred now Senator Marco Rubio to the mercurial
Crist, our Charlie jettisoned every conservative position he ever
held, adopted a raft of new liberal ones, and ran for the Senate as
an independent. Rubio whomped him by 20 points in November of
2010.
This kind of pasting by a younger man with a much shorter
political résumé than Crist’s would have been a clear enough
message to most politicians. But not for Crist, who while he has
accomplished almost nothing in the series of Florida offices he has
held, has an even thinner résumé outside of public office. Crist is
biding his time before seeking the next political office by
“working” as a television crooner for Morgan and Morgan, a large
Florida personal injury law firm that is solidly in the Democratic
corner.
Crist will have a difficult time of it if he does try to secure
the Democratic nomination for an office that party believes it can
win. The party has life-time Democrats who will seek the office.
These include but are not limited to Alex Sink, a retired Tampa
banker who narrowly lost to Scott in 2010, and, very likely, Tampa
mayor Pam Iorio. Others will appear as the race approaches.
In addition to convincing his new Democratic colleagues that he
should be allowed to start at the top, and that he won’t drop them
as quickly as he dropped his former Republican colleagues, Crist
faces the challenge of convincing Florida voters that he really
wants an office that he gave up in 2010. Crist could have run for
re-election as governor in 2010, and may well have won. But he
declared that he could best serve the state by serving in the U.S.
Senate. Most Floridians concluded he could best serve his own
self-interests by being a senator, and chose the more substantive
Rubio by a wide margin.
So it’s uphill all the way for our Charlie on his attempt to
return to the governor’s mansion. Florida Democrats have no reason
to believe this guy is really one of them, any more than he proved
to be a loyal Republican. His principles are wildly elastic, even
by the standards of politics. And Florida Republicans, still sore
about his liberal politics and his bolting the party after so many
had supported him, wouldn’t vote for him for assistant county
rat-catcher.
About the only people happy to see Charlie back in Florida
politics are political columnists, who appreciate the occasional
comic relief. In this last thing, if in nothing else, Charlie is
always reliable.
Larry Thornberry is a writer in Tampa.
