Marco Rubio - U.S. Senate - 2010

The Real Reasons For Charlie Crist’s Collapse
By Niall Stanage
Tuesday, 3/2/2010

The national media has presented Crist’s fall — and the rise of Rubio, who keynoted the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington — as a tea party-inspired uprising against a pragmatic centrist. But there’s more to it than that.

A series of interviews with Florida political observers and GOP insiders tells a different story — one in which Crist’s problems have less to do with his purported moderation than with an ardor for political expediency and opportunism.

“I don’t know whether Charlie is left-of-center or right-of-center,” says Brett Doster, an unaligned GOP strategist in the state. “Charlie is all about Charlie.”

Some of the antipathy for Crist among Florida Republicans is personal. His detractors argue that his ambitiousness is unusually stark and overweening, even by politicians’ standards. They note, for instance, that the governorship is the third consecutive post he’s held for only one term before seeking higher office. (Crist was previously the state’s attorney general and, before that, commissioner of education.)

“Throughout his career, Charlie Crist has always been looking for the next rung on the ladder,” says Mike Hanna, a veteran Republican operative who worked briefly for Crist during his campaign for attorney general.
Crist’s conduct during the 2008 GOP presidential primary season certainly fed this perception. It’s widely believed that the governor initially promised his endorsement to Rudy Giuliani, whose campaign then pursued a Florida-or-bust strategy. But three days before the Florida vote, Crist instead hitched his wagon to the ascendant McCain, who carried the state (immediately spurring the Crist-for-Veep chatter). Giuliani finished a distant third and dropped out.

Others who’ve watched him up-close in Florida paint a picture of an insubstantial figure, a man more interested in grabbing headlines than in the nuts-and-bolts of policy, and often disengaged or preoccupied during briefings.

…

Detractors point to Crist’s mutating positions on numerous issues.

In 2008, during the period when he was under consideration for the McCain ticket, he abruptly withdrew his previous opposition to offshore drilling, a change that brought him into line with McCain’s views.

During his first bid for the Senate more than 10 years ago — he lost to sitting Democrat Bob Graham by a wide margin — he described himself in a questionnaire as “pro-choice but not pro-abortion.” He now favors a simple, GOP primary-friendly term: “pro-life.”

As a state senator in the mid-’90s, Crist’s record on criminal justice issues was hard-line enough to earn him the nickname “Chain Gang Charlie.” He also backed a bill that required convicted criminals to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. While running for attorney general in 2002, he sought to gain a political dividend from these positions by running what the St. Petersburg Times described as a “dark, harsh ad that features violent criminals.”

Yet by 2007, Crist was arguing for the restoration of voting rights to felons and stating, “I believe in my heart that everyone deserves a second chance. They deserve an opportunity to get on with productive lives.”
But these shifts pale into insignificance beside what has proved to be Crist’s greatest political misstep.
In February 2009, Crist embraced, both figuratively and literally, President Barack Obama when Obama came to Florida to tout the economic stimulus package that had not yet become law.

…

At the rally with Obama, Crist said: “We know that it’s important that we pass a stimulus package.” By last November, he was telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “I didn’t endorse it … I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing.”

Some see the price Crist has paid for his Obama embrace as a fitting reward for a man whose career has been defined by political expediency.

“He miscalculated a changing political environment in Florida,” Rick Wilson says. “Charlie has always had a nose for the populist issue of the moment, and has been able to chase those things with success. This time, his instincts failed him.”

…

Terri Fine, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, suggests Crist should adopt a Florida version of a “Rose Garden strategy.”

“You show the people you can govern instead of going out on the campaign trail. If [Crist] can show he can govern, it would help him overcome this ‘wow-factor’ about Rubio,” she offers.

But, she adds, “Crist just comes across as being so two-faced.”

Read the full article here.