Charlie Crist was a Republican before he was an independent before he was a Democrat. He was elected governor of Florida as a conservative, "Reaganesque" member of the GOP. When his US Senate bid began to falter in the 2010 Republican primary, Crist jumped ship and ran in the general as a third party candidate. He got demolished. Having incinerated his bridges to the Republican Party -- and in desperate need of a monied party infrastructure to resurrect his all-important career -- Crist completed his self-interested journey over to the Democrats. All he had to do was endorse Barack Obama for re-election, switch his policy positions on virtually every major issue, and gratuitously insult his former party as a band of "intolerable" racists.
Dan wrote up his comments on Univision yesterday. It's laughably dishonest for Crist to claim his departure from the GOP was precipitated by anything other than the ass-kicking he sustained from Marco Rubio. It's downright despicable to cry 'racism' as the revisionist pretext. If Rubio had never existed, Crist would likely be a "racist" Republican Senator today -- leading the charge against Obamacare (which he now hails as "great") and co-sponsoring pro-life legislation (he's magically become pro-choice), because that's what his position would have required. The guy is soulless. Does anyone doubt for one nanosecond that he'd flip back on all of these issues if he saw that double-backflip as necessary to advance his precious political career? What cartoonish excuse would he dream up in that circumstance? "I left the Democratic Party because I saw firsthand that their grassroots activists hate America and love Communism. It was intolerable." Sen. Marco Rubio, the man who crushed Crist's self-interested dreams four years ago, appeared with Neil Cavuto on Fox News yesterday afternoon. He said he was hesitant to even dignify Crist's calumnies with a response -- but not too hesitant:
Cavuto: Do you think [Crist] is a phony?
Rubio: Absolutely. I believe that during the campaign. It's one of the reasons why I ran for the US Senate. I didn't want my next US Senator to be someone like that...who would embarrass us.
The ever-snarky Dave Weigel shipped some snark Crist's way yesterday:
But didn’t Crist lose to a Hispanic Republican? http://t.co/KyWIoCq2Wy
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 7, 2014
Indeed. The "racist" party chose a Latino over an orange-hued white dude. And said white dude then instantly reinvented himself as an independent to run against the Hispanic candidate who beat him, and Democrats' African-American nominee. Why, that sounds...kind of racist, so long as we're baselessly imputing motives to people. I'll leave you with this classic clip from the 2010 primary campaign:
In that ten minute segment alone, Crist labels himself a "good conservative," and describes his philosophy of governance as one that seeks "less taxing, less spending, less government, more freedom." He also calls for the total repeal of Obamacare. Today, he no longer calls himself a conservative. He's joined the party of more taxing, more spending, more government, and less freedom. And he's a big fan of Obamacare. Question: Was 2010's version of Charlie Crist lying through his teeth to the people of Florida, or was he opposing "the African-American president's" agenda out of rank bigotry? Remarkably, Charlie Crist is currently leading in the polls -- not just in Florida, but in the sweepstakes to be the nation's most contemptible politician. He's facing some stiff competition, though.