Charlie Crist to G.O.P.: Drop Dead
Charlie Crist to G.O.P.: Drop Dead
“Florida was to Americans what America had always been to the rest of the world,” according to Susan Orlean in “The Orchid Thief,” “a fresh, free, unspoiled start.” Fresh, perhaps, for Gov. Charlie Crist, but certainly not unspoiled.
As we all know, the Republican governor has become the first official casualty of the Tea Party movement, declaring Thursday that he will stop seeking his party’s Senate nomination and run as an independent.
“My decision to run for the U.S. Senate as a candidate without party affiliation says more about our nation and our state than it says about me,” Mr. Crist said. “Unfortunately our political system is broken. I think we need a new tone in Washington.” Florida Republicans, however, think they need a new tone closer to home: “Support for Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s U.S. Senate bid has fallen this month to its lowest level yet,” reported Rasmussen on April 12. “Just 28 percent of the state’s likely Republican voters support his candidacy … [with] former state House Speaker Marco Rubio edging up a point from last month to 57 percent, his highest level of support to date.”
Crist presented his decision as one of principle. “That’s not what this is about at all,” Rubio countered, in an interview with ABC News. “In fact this has nothing to do with ideas or principles or ideology; it’s about, quite frankly, political convenience. It’s about someone who wants to continue his career in politics and doesn’t believe he can do that this year within the Republican Party.” Former Florida governor Jeb Bush piled on: “I am not surprised. This decision is not about policy or principles. It is about what he believes is in his political self-interest.”
The (sinking?) ship quickly lost some ballast: “At least three members of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s campaign staff resigned on Thursday,” reported CNN. “Crist’s campaign attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, a veteran G.O.P. legal player who advised both Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns and later Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign, sent Crist his resignation letter moments after Thursday’s announcement. Communications Director Andrea Saul and Press Secretary Amanda Hennenberg – the campaign’s main conduit to the media – also resigned their positions.”
This may not be terrible news for the campaign, as it may have to start trimming expenses: “Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) said, ‘I certainly will request the money that I donated to his campaign from my leadership P.A.C. back,’ ” reports Dave Cook of the Christian Science Monitor. “Senator Cornyn added that, ‘people have already asked for their money back and I expect that to continue. I think in addition to seeing his coffers depleted by having to return money, I think his ability to raise money as an independent will be dramatically down.’ Gov.Crist has $7 million in the bank and is not legally obligated to return the funds.”
Legal obligation or no, Crist has a financial fight on his hands. “The conservative Club for Growth said it planned a campaign to get all kinds of donors — not just the big guys — to ask for a refund,” reports Johanna Neuman at Top of the Ticket. “The group spearheaded a similar effort last year after Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter switched from Republican to Democrat. Spokesman Michael Connolly told the Washington Times that that effort accounted for from $800,000 to $1.1 million in exiting funds from Specter’s war chest.”
O.K., enough with the facts, let’s get to the bloggistic speculation. “Do Democrat Kendrick Meek and Republican Marco Rubio try to run up their base percentages, trying to keep Crist from building a coalition, or do they try to appeal to the broad middle — even though the middle doesn’t generally turn out in midterm elections?” asks the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “If Meek swings too far to the left, he collects very few independents, and can’t build on his base. If Rubio swings too far to the right, he gets stuck in the low thirties. Crist could win by pulling 15-20 percent of Democrats and Republicans from Meek and Rubio and 75 percent of independents. So — the math has changed the political strategy. Meek and Rubio will be working to keep as many moderate independent leaners in their coalition as possible while keeping their bases enthusiastic. Crist will build on his geographic strength — St. Pete/Tampa, his popularity with African Americans and Jewish voters, the possibility that Puerto Rican-Americans don’t cotton to Rubio — and can begin to peel away voters.”
A couple of people who don’t think Crist will peel away much of anything are Todd Harris and Thompson, a pair of Rubio Advisers. “Crist’s current level of support, as measured by polling, in a three-way race is artificially high, while support for Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek is artificially low,” they told the Daily Caller’s Mike Riggs. Here’s their fuller explanation:
According to both internal and public polling data, Crist is drawing support from a significant number of Democrats and approximately 25-33 percent of Republicans. In some current surveys, Crist actually beats Meek among Democrats. These numbers are based almost entirely on name ID, and as the race develops further they will change dramatically. For starters, there is very little chance Crist maintains his current level of GOP support …Additionally, Meek is still largely unknown, even by Democrats. But he is a credible candidate with access to a significant financial war chest. As he becomes better known there is every reason to assume that the overwhelming majority of Democrats will come home and support him. Similarly, Marco is not currently well known beyond voters who have been paying close attention to the race. In fact, buried in the data of the much-talked-about recent Quinnipiac poll showing Crist leading Marco by two points in a 3-way race was this fact: more than 40 percent of general election voters didn’t know enough about Marco to have an opinion of him. As he becomes better known to a wider audience his general election support will continue to grow.
More than a few Democrats are delighted by all this. “Although some polls have shown Crist narrowly leading a three-way contest against Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek, my hunch is that this race will become quite difficult for Crist,” predicts desmoinesdem at MyDD. “His key campaign staff have quit, his pollster has severed ties, and he will lose many of his donors. Both major parties will nominate serious candidates against him. Joe Lieberman faced none of those obstacles when he decided to run for for re-election as an independent after losing the 2006 Democratic primary in Connecticut … Meek has trailed in polls to date, but against two opponents he may have a decent shot if he can consolidate his support among Democrats. He said today that donations are pouring in now that Crist has decided to run as an independent.”
In fact, even before Crist’s big announcement, some pundits thoughtMeek merited close watching. “Why doesn’t Kendrick Meek get more respect?” asked Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com last week:
For the last few months, when talk turns to Florida, political pundits have focused on the meteoric rise of Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist in the state’s Republican primary for Senate. And today, with a new poll from Quinnipiac University showing Rubio opening up “an elephant sized 56-33 lead” over Crist, the commentariat seems more taken with the possibility of Crist running as an independent. The same survey shows Crist with a not-quite-statistically-significant 32 percent to 30 percent lead over Rubio in a three-way race with Meek, trailing at 24 percent.But largely lost in this discussion are two important findings: First, in the most likely match-up for the fall, Quinnipiac shows Rubio leading Kendrick Meek by just six percentage points (42 percent to 38 percent). That’s roughly the same margin as on the current trend estimate on our chart (43.7 percent to 38.5 percent). By that measure, Meek currently runs closer to his likely Republican opponent than do incumbent Democratic Senators Reid (NV), Lincoln (AR), and Specter (PA).
O.K., the earthquake has certainly changed Meek’s place in the landscape, but the real story here is about Marco Rubio, the conservative movement and whether the Tea Parties are shrinking the G.O.P. tent. Crist was never a favorite of the movement, and now the true believers can speak their minds about him. Allahpundit at Hot Air urges everyone to watch the video of Crist’s announcement:
Turns out God wants him on the floor, to borrow a line from “Hoosiers,” and also that our political system, which was peachy keen six months ago when he was cruising to the Republican nomination, is now “broken.” You know, Frum made a good point in his post backing Rubio: When Lieberman went indie after losing the 2006 primary to Lamont, at least there were important policy differences at stake. There’s nothing at stake here except ambition. Quoth Jeb Bush, “I am not surprised. This decision is not about policy or principles. It is about what he believes is in his political self-interest.” Try to force yourself to the end or else you’ll miss him insisting that the way to set a “new tone” in D.C. is to send another transparently careerist principle-less politician to Capitol Hill. Works for me.
National Review’s Daniel Foster accuses Crist of “Employing a bizarre logic that would suggest he doesn’t understand the nature of either primary elections or the two-party architecture from which he has benefited immensely over his career.” He explains:
Crist said that whether he wins or loses should be decided by the whole of the Florida electorate. “It’s not one club’s decision or another — or even a club within that club. . . .That’s why we go straight to November.” Crist also gave listeners a taste of more and bigger flip-flops to come. He listed among the difficult choices he made during his tenure as Florida governor both the decision to support offshore drilling and, in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, his decision to oppose it. In a moment of profound understatement, Crist said that “I am aware that after this speech ends, I don’t have either party helping me.”
The Daily Beast’s Reihan Salam co-wrote a book on how the G.O.P. can expand, but he’s certainly happy to see it shrink by one member this week:
Many observers see Charlie Crist as a patron saint of Republican moderation, a sensible pragmatist who has been driven out of his party by frenzied Tea Partiers on a jihad against common sense. Some even suggested that Crist should join the Democrats. This is, in my view, a baseless smear against Democrats, who deserve better than to be associated with the likes of Charlie Crist. Consider Crist’s reaction to President Obama’s health reform effort. Instead of defending the effort as a sensible measure that would improve the deficit while delivering a massive coverage expansion, he seemed to argue that he liked every part of it except for the fact that it would, in his words, “raise taxes significantly, it would raise rates significantly and it would take half a trillion dollars out of Medicare.” We can debate the merits of the Affordable Care Act backwards and forwards, but surely Crist understands that paying for a coverage expansion requires either raising taxes, finding savings in the Medicare program, and probably both. But rather than make the case for, say, a less expensive approach to coverage expansion that would require less in the way of revenues or spending cuts, he wished away the problem, as he so often does.
“Charlie Crist’s opponents aren’t paragons of virtue,” Salam tells us. “Meek is, to his credit, a consistent liberal who is willing to support tax increases to fund new spending commitments, which is more than can be said of Crist. Rubio has taken the remarkable step of arguing that Social Security spending needs to be trimmed, a gutsy move for a candidate of any party in Florida. Only one candidate is awe-inspiring in his mendacity, and that is Charlie Crist. But for the love of all that is decent, let’s free Charlie Crist from the crushing burden of public service and free him to become a corporate pitchman, alligator-wrestler, or country lawyer—anything but U.S. senator.”
My colleague Ross Douthat sees eye to eye with his former co-author, Salam: “The Florida governor may be a moderate in some sense, but his real loyalties are to cynicism, self-interest (though this time, I’m pretty sure that he’s misjudged where those interests lie), and the persistent pursuit of the budgetary free lunch.”
So, will nobody on the right shed a tear for Charlie Crist? David Frum will, sort of:
The center right has got to hold together. We cannot afford more NY-23s. In all but the most extreme circumstances, the rule has to be that those who participate in a party contest abide by the results of that process. It’s one thing if the race is Lieberman v. Lamont, and what’s at issue is success or failure in war. I used that comparison in a tweet today, but it does not stand up to scrutiny: the differences between Crist and Rubio are much more differences in tone, temperament, and personality. Had Crist prevailed in the Florida Republican primary, he would have had every valid reason to expect Rubio to support the outcome. The reverse should have held true.Crist continues to lead the polls. I expect that lead to fade as Republicans rally to Rubio and independents question the grounds for Crist’s candidacy. I hope that translates into a Rubio win, but I worry that a Rubio candidacy will be a tougher and harder fight than a Crist candidacy would have been: I don’t share the view that the conservative future belongs to Rubio’s hard-edged style of politics, especially not in a state like Florida. But all that is past helping. The GOP nomination race has a presumptive winner and Republicans of all stripes have a new standard-bearer.
So, apparently, does anyone thinking that what this race reallyneeded was a billionaire mortgage speculator with a passion for erotic art and close friendships with Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss.Meet Jeff Greene.
If his candidacy is a joke, few Democrats are finding it funny. “In general, the national party would ordinarily be delighted to have a self-financing billionaire jump into a wide-open Senate race,” writes Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. “There are, however, a few issues with Greene’s colorful background. For one thing, he was a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in California in the 1980s. For another, Mike Tyson was the best man at Greene’s 2008 wedding and Heidi Fleiss lived in his guest house after she was released from prison. Oh, and there’s also the small matter of Greene getting rich by betting on the housing collapse that killed Florida’s economy. Nevertheless, Greene appears to be completely serious about the campaign, and has already received advice from Joe Trippi and Doug Schoen.”
Considering that two of Trippi’s and Schoen’s recent high-profile clients were, respectively, presidential candidate John Edwards and soon-to-be-ex-Senator Evan Bayh, you could speculate that Green might have spent his billions more efficiently. And can they really help him overcome some additional obvious hurdles — that his family only recently moved to the state and that he toyed around with the idea of running for Congress in California as a Republican? Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, anyway, thinks it’s doable: “Still, these factors may come together to form more of the Clinton-esque ‘lovable rogue’ picture than the ’sleazebag’ picture, depending on how the primary goes.” Senator Green — now that would be a fresh start.
Comments