What an odd choice by Debbie Wasserperson Schultz,
chairwomanperson of the Democratic Party. With all the
consequential things going on in America and the world, why invite
such an inconsequential personage as Charlie Crist to speak on the
final night of the Democratic convention? Why such a lightweight by
any measure, just before such heavyweights as the Democrats have?
Can the party be that hard-up for speakers?
I guess the charm for Democrats is that Crist, who was a RINO
during his single term as Florida’s governor, and then became an
independent because he couldn’t keep up with Marco Rubio in the
Republican Senate primary in 2010, has endorsed Obama for
re-election and has said a bunch of glowing, downright fantastical
stuff about him. Veteran Charlie-watchers in Florida expect Crist
to register Democrat and run in 2014 against current Republican
governor Rick Scott, who is more popular than dandruff, but barely.
Republican to Democrat cross-dressing is rare these days, so this
was undoubtedly Charlie’s ticket to speak.
Crist’s six-minute witnessing for Obama was mostly fluff, as his
speeches mostly are. There were the usual clichés about “common
sense solutions” and “finding common ground” with no specifics
about which solutions or what common ground on what. Crist wore out
these dreary tropes in the 2010 Senate race and lost to Rubio by 20
points.
And Democrats should be skeptical about the few designative
things he did say. Crist has a long history of saying one thing
before doing something else, and holding such fluid positions on
issues that it’s a challenge for him to remember where he stands on
anything on any given day.
Crist stiffed Florida Republicans who had donated to his Senate
campaign in 2010 by bolting the party, turning in his remaining
conservative positions in for new liberal ones, and running against
Rubio as an independent. This after saying repeatedly, including
once on Fox News Sunday in late winter of 2010, that he
would not leave the Republican Party and run as an independent.
Crist is well and truly loathed among the conservative Republican
base in Florida for these high jinks. And Florida Democrats have no
reason to believe Crist won’t stiff them as well when he finds it
expedient to do so.
Charlie dragged Ronald Reagan in on his makeover scam, quoting,
in reverse, the old cowpoke’s explanation of why he became a
Republican. “I didn’t leave the Republican Party — it left me,”
Crist said. He even trotted out that recent canard that even the
normally acute Jeb Bush has fallen for, that “Ronald Reagan would
have been too moderate, too reasonable for today’s GOP.”
Those paying even minimal attention are entitled to wonder about
Crist’s conversion. Take a look at some of the things Crist was
saying, not years ago, but in 2010 when he was trying to
out-conservative Rubio in the Republican primary: Crist continually
referred to himself as a “Ronald Reagan conservative.” He said he
thought Sarah Palin was a great VP pick. After catching flack for
saying he was for Obama’s 786 billion stimulus slush fund, he said
he was against it and said Obama was a profligate spender. He said
he was pro-life and pro-gun. “You can’t get more conservative than
me,” he said at campaign stops.
Barely two years later, Crist is whooping up a party that is
anti-gun, incontinent in its spending, and considered Sarah Palin a
threat to the republic when she was on the Republican ticket. He’s
hamming it up about how the very positions he held two years ago
are now “extreme.”
Florida Republicans are having fun at Charlie’s expense. Rubio,
who whomped Charlie in the 2010 Senate race, joked that Charlie is
“running out of parties” to join. Republican Party of Florida
Chairman Lenny Curry called Crist “a crass opportunist” who is
little more than a “political ladder climber.” One who can’t decide
which ladder to climb.
“You can’t make up Charlie Crist,” Jeb Bush said on a recent
appearance on Fox Business News. “He’s unique. He’s organized his
life around his personal ambition and ran in a primary where he was
the odds-on favorite, but didn’t offer a compelling reason to be
elected to the Senate. Marco Rubio cleaned his clock and beat him
in the general and now he’s trying to find a way to get back into
the political game.”
There is some evidence that Florida Democrats don’t believe that
Charlie is born again. Even if he is, they aren’t keen on letting
him start at the top. Several party luminaries have said there are
plenty of “real Democrats” available to run against Scott in
2014.
Former State Senator from Gainesville, Rod Smith, now chairman
of the Florida Democratic Party, who wasn’t even told Crist would
be speaking at the convention, told the Miami Herald, “If
he wants to join our church, he’ll be welcome in the congregation,
but that doesn’t mean he’ll be preacher. He might not even be the
choir director. He’ll have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.”
So perhaps Charlie’s excellent new political arrangement is not
a true marriage, but just a six-minute late summer romance. Even
so, what was Debbie Wasserperson Schultz thinking?
