Four years ago this week, Charlie Crist was a rising star in the GOP. He was the only non-incumbent Republican to win election as governor of a large state. Two years later, the various Republican candidates for president flocked to Florida, seeking his endorsement. Some attributed the collapse of Rudy Giullani’s campaign to the Crist’s decision to endorse John McCain, a move which destroyed the former New York Mayor’s Sunshine State strategy.
Tomorrow, he may finish third in a race he entered, expecting to win in a walk. He has revealed himself a man more interested in his own advancement than in any particular ideas or initiatives.
The other night, Glenn linked a piece from the Miami Herald, nicely summarizing the rapid decline of the once golden boy of Florida politics:
Since that casual May 2009 e-mail announcing your candidacy for U.S. Senate, you’ve ripped apart the Florida GOP, and now it’s dividing Florida Democrats. You’ve gone from national superstar and future presidential contender to someone banished from your lifelong party and fighting for political survival.
(Read the whole thing for a Florida paper’s inside look at the fall of Crist)
Today, Marco Rubio, barely on anyone’s radar screens a year ago, has now become a rising star in the GOP. And Charlie Crist, well, I hear law firms in St. Petersburg pay former governors well.
Number one rule in a conservative ascendancy, never never compromise on your principles!!!
Ummm…..
Sarah Palin was a non-incumbent Republican who was elected governor four years ago…
but, by “large” state, I mean population-wise, not geographically. Butch Otter also won in Idaho that years as did Jim Gibbons in Nevada.
I think he’ll come in second rather than third.
It is sad, in a way, because he ran a good campaign when he was running for governor. Now his campaign has reeked of desperation for the better part of the year since Rubio first caught up to him.
I hope that those who do in fact intend to vote Democrat will vote for Meek and not Crist.
The Oompah Loompah does not deserve to end up in the Senate.
Kendrick Meek had the best line of the recent debate…”…whenever I hear the sound of flip flops in the hall, I think the Governor is coming.” It’s clear now that Good Time Charlie is only out for Charlie, promising all things to all people in the hopes they won’t come to their senses in time. He fooled me in the last election and for the last time. Charlie has been a major disappointment to many Floridians, promising things he did not deliver and then abruptly leaving the party when it was clear he would not win the primary. Rubio has had a clear and consistent message since day one and stayed on message for the entire campaign. He’ll make a great Senator…
He could get a job doing 1-800 Axe Gury ads.
But don’t forget, Charlie Crist is one of those establishment moderate Republicans we conservatives are always told to shut up and support out of party loyalty … like Arlen Specter and Lisa Murkowski.
Too bad for Charlie that the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory outsourced all of the Ooopma Loompa jobs to Southeast Asia.
V, Carrot Face wouldn’t have left the
Party(family) if only you were a more obedientGOP voter(kid).Charlie Christ has one thing on his mind, and one thing only, and it’s not the people of Florida. His actions show that Charlie is only concerned about himself. The people of Florida will have spoken, and Charlie will wish that he would have just accepted defeat with grace back when he lost the Republican primary to Marco Rubio, rather than defeat today against the same man, but this time with humiliation. Good riddance.
Last night I posted on my own blog that I trashed a post it was so *angry.* That never published post was about Charlie Crist.
So, I won’t do a post about him but I will leave this comment. 🙂
I can respect honestly held strong and differing opinions (that’s why I read this blog) but I can’t respect people who behave like Charlie Crist has in this election. I voted for him in 2006 and wish I could have that back to vote against him twice today.
He pursued conservatives, especially social conservatives like me, and in his recent ad that is ALLLLLL over the airwaves here in Florida he has the gall to call the very people he used to build his political career “extremists.”
If a person honestly believes that… they are wrong … but I get it. The difference here is that in 2006 he had no problem manipulating money out of the very people he is stigmatizing today.
I would think our liberal, moderate … whatever friends aren’t stupid to what Crist is doing. It’s at the least sad and at the most shameful.
If conservatives open their eyes and look closely at the FL Senate race, they’ll see tomorrow (E Day 10 plus 1) that CC was a spoiler in the race… Rubio would be another Christine ODonnell making the way for a Democrat victory if CC wasn’t there to divide the moderate-liberal vote AWAY from Rubio. Funny thing –soc cons and Rubio’s gang have CC to thank for their election.
And let’s also remember, GAY patriots, that soc cons waged a whispering campaign for 2 yrs against CC implying he was gay and trying to smear him with that allegation. Nice company some here keep, eh? Whether it’s the farRight or MikeRogers’ types on the farLeft, smear campaigns against people using “gay” as a smear ought to be condemned by all gays, no matter the political or ideological stripe –of, for those faux-indies, lack of stripe, I guess.
CC is, at best, a self serving politician that destroyed the prospective victor in the FL Senate race, Mr Meeks, and allowed Rubio to win. Did CC deserve the Sen GOP nomination? I thought that was why our Party holds primaries –to let the Party loyalists decide… not the armchair quarterbacks sipping Schlitz and microwaving Velvetta for another bowl of chips in another state.
And when the “Loyal” establishment Republicans don’t like the results, they switch parties (Specter), run as independents (Crist), run write-in campaigns (Murky), or form “Republicans for Reid.”
Funny how party loyalty is only expected of conservatives.
So Carrot Face is blessing to Republicans and the only thing that saved Rubio? OMG MM, do you get it all bass-ackwards.
I’ll leave someone else to post polls of how Rubio would have fared in a no-Crist matchup. I believe he would have done well. But whether or not that is correct: helping Rubio – which Carrot Face has done chiefly by making Rubio look very good in comparison – was never Carrot Face’s plan, so no, he doesn’t deserve any moral credit for it.
Oh, you mean like the following? http://www.gaypatriot.net/2010/08/11/greg-gutfelds-gay-bar-next-to-911-mosque/
I agree, though in a different way than you mean: I thought Bruce’s quip was very funny, and I am proud(-ish; usually 😉 ) to be in Bruce’s company.
“soc cons ”
The same ones you’re relying on, right now, to rescue you from a future of socialism and metastasizing government, right? Where’s your “moderate voters”, your social liberals, why can’t THEY save you?
Oh yeah- they’re too busy organizing their Stephen Colbert “Rally To Restore Sanity” scrapbooks.
What, you mean you don’t tremble before the mighty intellect of Meghan McCain?
V, I don’t even think her rack is all a’ that.
Speaking of McCain’s, here is what Landslide McCain said about his friend Democrat Russ Feingold’s possible defeat in Wisconsin:
Yeah, you can sure count on those moderates.
ILC, that ax grinding is kind of getting old even for this venue but it’s the only act you got, so I’m resigned to it. Maybe it’s better over at the “I Hate Matt forum and I’ll dispute anything he says, no matter how silly it makes me look by comparison”?
You and the echo chamber have it wrong again… the polls clearly show that Rubio –on his own– couldn’t win the election without the spoiler CC in the mix. Just like CC and Clinton (I think) tried to get Meeks out of the way, the same act could have been engaged against CC to Meeks’ benefit and victory. Frankly, Meeks should have tried but, unlike the soc cons, I’m one of those “loyal GOPers” that VdaK and others in the echo chamber like to lampoon in order to hide the disgrace of their own disloyalty to McCain, the GOP and helping assure an Obama win.
Rubio’s strength is completely and inexorably tied to CC staying in the race and dividing up the mostly moderate-to-center independent majority FLA vote… which likely would have gone to Meeks like it’s doing in CT, DE, CA and other states. Rubio doesn’t and can’t reach that vote. The good news is that, when he gets to DC, he’ll be pulling the lever for the GOP caucus on the organizing vote –and, unlike the echo chamber of political seppuku proponents here– I’ll take a GOP whether conservative or moderate or even progressive.
And you get it wrong a second way, too, which is quite a feat for someone with both feet still in their mouth. I wasn’t referencing anything Bruce or Dan have written here in the reference to “Gay patriots” above demeaning someone by using their gayness as a smear… I was talking about the soc cons who did it to CC and in whom you (and other commenters here) ought to be ashamed to associate so glibly, gladly. You may not recall, I can, Bruce was once the target of such a smear campaign by the farLeft Democrat blogs and some of us rose to his defense… grandly, out of that troubled time, a stronger more principled blog developed –and Dan’s wise voice found a home, thankfully.
So nice try to twist and counter-thrust my point into something intended to cull out or isolate –you really do need to find a new bag of tricks after this election; you’ve overused the cheap ones.
I’m sorry, I left out a point… I want CC to stay in the race up to the very end and then I want him out of politics for his disloyalty to the Party… just like current Sen Murkowski –and I would have said the same about Mike Castle if he had endorsed Coons.
Unlike soc cons, I value political party loyalty. I was tested to the max in having to vote for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 because he was the Party’s rightful nominee. Too bad soc cons hadn’t put down the velvetta and schlitz and pulled the lever for McCain –they wouldn’t have saddled America with Obama.
Gee. I started reading GP back before 9/11. I stopped posting and reading here for a while, forget now why.
So when did MM become a troll? No, seriously: maybe y’all don’t pick up on it because you’re here every day, but he didn’t used to be like this. What happened?
Too bad Landslide McCain couldn’t conservative voters he was a viable alternative to Obama.
V da K> “Yeah, you can sure count on those moderates.”
You know, for someone like you who seems to be content to toss rocks at glass houses instead of trying to build something with those self-satisfying missiles, I would think that McCain’s testimony of his friendship with Feingold should be instructive even for those of tiny heart. Reagan, to his credit, understood that at the end of the day your political opponent didn’t need to be gutted in order for you to feel good and grand… you could appreciate your opponent even if, God forbid, he had a political position opposite of yours enlightened and noble one. Of course, Reagan never had to deal with Obama or the Chicago crowd inside the WH today.
Personally, I’m not at all sorry to see Feingold hit the off ramp. Nor will I lose a tear because McCain found something of value or merit in Feingold’s willingness to be less, not more, partisan in DC. But then, to some soc cons raised on the litmus test protocols and purity purges, pragmatic politics is akin to treason. Such a shame tiny hearts can be so ignoble.
And that’s a caution for the newly elected GOP… if pragmatic becomes the test of high treason to the TP, we may no longer be riding the Tiger but getting eaten by it like in 2008.
DaveP, I don’t think I’m a troll… moderate on social issues, fis con on fiscal issues, solidly GOP.
The problem rests in the anti-GOP soc cons here who wanted McCain and the GOP to lose so that America could get a real dose of liberal Obama’ism, hoping the pendulum would swing back so hard it’d make tough soc con issues a slam dunk.
Not a troll, DaveP –although, if ILC is your reference, I’m not sure reason or rational discourse can dissuade you of any notion.
First, I think McCain’s friendship with Russ Feingold was probably born of ideological affinity. McCain rarely says anything kind of conservatives, whom he labels “agents of intolerance.” But he is full of praise for leftists like Feingold and his “good friend” Ted Kennedy.
Second, his expression of friendship could have waited until after the election, or could have been phrased in terms of, “I wish him well in his post-senate career.”
DaveP, I won’t claim to know what “the change” was exactly, or what caused it. I will only tell you when I first noticed it. I seem to remember it being 2007-ish. Immigration and border security were hot topics. Many folks on this blog supported legal immigration, plus border security (including yours truly). Which meant we supported border security. Something about that, I still have never been able to figure out what, deeply freaked out MM. He repeatedly called many fine commentors on this blog “bigot”, “racist”, “nativist” and the like. At one point, he called our host (Bruce the Gay Patriot) something very like a “blue-blood neo-Nazi” (or perhaps it was “neo-Nazi blue-blood”). Bruce is well over it, I am sure. My point is only to illustrate the weirdness of what MM did, and has been more or less doing ever since. MM recently asserted that he “won the immigration debate” on GP or that I (obviously he doesn’t like me much) “lost it” or something. In my spare moments, I wonder seriously, genuinely if MM has become delusional.
(Well… Not very often. But after reading such comments of his, I mean.)
(continuing) I have observed MM having the most problem with me, DaveP, when I quote him accurately – reflecting back to him some crazy notion he just tried to put over. Personal attacks on me are sure to follow. I really don’t mind, I take it humorously. 🙂
DaveP, you have the ever ax-grinding “I hate Matt” ILC faux-indie’s view and then you have the truth revealed in #26… ILC done gots his act and a willing echo chamber –even truth has trouble getting out of those confines.
V da K, fair point in the latter –I doubt there’s ideological affinity between McCain and Feingold… even for you, that’s a stretch that just can’t be made.
McCain’s your enemy and you’ll trash him at any or every chance. We get that. When McCain talks about agents of intolerance, however, he wasn’t talking about conservatives –he is usually talking about soc cons like poster boi Tom Delay. Let’s keep the soc in front of con and you got it right on both points.
It’s funny that McCain’s advise to the GOP through 2000s is the most salient political principle that’s keeping the TPers relevant and on-target… keep the soc con divisiveness at bay, find the issues you agree on and build or add to a political success.
I swear, it’s more like Alice in Wonderland everyday.
What ILC? No usual play of “personal attacks on me in 10, 9, 8…” from you? Put down the ax, check the bag of tricks… I know it’s there.
Oh wait, you played it already.
Any chance you can stay on topic and discuss without personal slams or cheap tricks?
The other issue with MM’s posting is he seems to employ a varient of the ‘no true Scottsman’ Though in this case it’s ‘no true moderate Republican.’
“Look at Spector’s betrayal” becomes, “You can’t use him, he left the party.”
Then he’s here saying that it’s ‘Moderate’ Charlie Crist who heroically ran as an independent to allow Rubio to win, evidence to the contrary.
Same thing for Mercowskee and Castle. I mean look above at his post above where he condemns ‘So-Cons’ for not rallying behind McCain, but then doesn’t practice what he preaches and doesn’t rally behind Rubio/O’Donnell, et all.
Marco is going to be a superstar.
And he may end up winning with 50% or more of the FL vote in a three way race.
Charlie….well if you ‘ve listened to him at all the past few months, he is a perfect example of an opportunistic polititian that so much of the public is furious and fed up with. Bye Bye Charlie.
Rubio/Haley 2012
Bzzzzzzzzzt, wrong answer. I have no hatred of you, MM. None.
All you would have to go on, in thinking I might, is (again) the way I quote you in order to reflect back to you some B.S. you’ve just tried to put over. Apparently, when people disagree with you, in your mind that must mean they feel emotions of hate for you. Interesting.
I also notice, MM, that you can’t refute my description at #28 of some of your past behavior on this blog. At #31/33. you did indeed respond only in the vein of character attacks; nothing impressive. Kindly forgive my noticing.
Governor Charlie Crist made his bed of nails & pins when he believed it to be a down comforter. His naked opportunism & lack of any true Conservative principles just revealed himself to be a power-hungry opportunist; his flip-flops on controversial issues on top of trying to President Obama’s nonexistent coattails did him in…
When does Charlie Crist dump his beard of a wife to be with rancid drag queen, Lisa “Princess” Murkowski? They could move to Arizona to live happily ever after in politics. Arizona loves their RINO’s.
LOL @Sebastian – Carrot Face ‘n’ Murky, sittin’ in a tree, NOT k-i-s-s-i-n-g…
Rubio beating Crist by 1,000,000 votes and winning Latinos big (remember Crist’s cheap shot in the debate). Suck dirt, Carrot Face.
ILC, thanks for letting us all get down in the gutter with you in yet another thread… dragging up 2007’ish “quotes” you don’t bother to read? And you demand a response… you’re better than an elevator ride with Steven Colbert and Joy Behar.
Now you’re not even making sense, MM. Give it up. Try following your own advice: stay on topic.