Or so he claims. But here are the facts.
In 2010, when Charlie Crist (D/R/I-FL) realized he wouldn’t win the Republican nomination for a US Senate seat, he immediately dropped out of the running and ran as an independent. He lost in the general election.
Now, only a few short years later, he’s done an about-face, shamelessly running for governor as a candidate for the Democratic party.
I hope voters see through this charade but Crist isn’t a political novice nor oblivious to how this all looks. That's why he has a perfectly good explanation for why he switched parties twice. And that reason is? Racism, of course:
Charlie Crist says in a new TV interview that he left the GOP because of racism in the party toward President Barack Obama, stressing a point the former Florida governor has made before.
“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there,” Crist said Tuesday on Fusion’s “America with Jorge Ramos.” “I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”
When facing tough questions from the media about why he's now a Democrat, Crist need only invoke the R-word and progressives will happily nod along.
That’s apparently the strategy Crist is now employing to avoid the giant elephant in the room -- that is to say, his habit of jettisoning his “core beliefs” the moment he realizes they are no longer politically expedient. But in fairness, I suspect Crist needed a believable explanation for why he left the GOP, and charges of racism are as good as any.