Most endorsements strike me as pretty worthless. But Charlie Crist’s strong endorsement of President Obama could be pretty valuable. The timing of it is valuable, too, coming on the eve of the Republican convention. There are a lot of Crist Republicans in Florida who probably feel like the Republican Party has grown too extreme if people like Charlie Crist are no longer welcome. And I think they were be particularly amenable to the message Crist is sending.
It doesn’t take much to flip Florida from a Republican to a Democratic state, or vice-versa. If the Crist Republicans vote for Obama, Obama will probably win the state.
I’ve been saying for years that Crist would have been a natural candidate for President before the Teabaggers took over the GOP. As it is, the only political future I see for him, in terms of elected office anyway, will require switching parties at some point. This may be another major step in that direction, the first being his independent run at FL Gov.
But that’s just the thing. Does anyone really care about Crist? He managed what percentage of the vote in a 3-way with Teahadist Rubio and Kendrick Meek? Rubio still received 48.9%(according to Wikipedia) of the vote. I guess what I’m saying is that whether Obama wins Florida or not, Crist isn’t going to matter.
Woops. I meant FL Senate, not Gov. And as far as who cares about him and what he thinks, I suppose there has to be some contingency of sane Republicans in FL who view Crist as one of their own, and a sort of symbol of what the party should have been.
But ultimately I agree with you, he’s lost all relevance with the FL GOP as such and won’t have any at all until he jumps the fence and joins the Democratic party, which, I’m guessing, is his ultimate aim.
Crist will run against Rick Scott in 2014, and absent any other challengers, will probably beat him.
My Dad is a Crist Republican, and he was a Jeb Bush supporter back in the day. But he’s been so disgusted by the GOP for the past few years that he voted for Obama in 2008, and will this year too. He thought Crist was about as good as you can get as a politician, like a latter-day George Romney or something. So he was stunned that both Rick Scott and Marco Rubio won in 2010.
Thus, I don’t think Crist’s endorsement will sway his vote for Obama, but it will reinforce it. And for those like him that are a little more on the fence, it could have some impact.
Re: Crist becoming President, it’s a non-starter, mainly because of rumors about being closeted that have dogged Crist for years.
Do you see him beating Scott in the GOP primary, or as a Dem or Ind candidate in the general? I just don’t see a future for Crist in the Republican party anywhere. Not that he’s some big liberal or anything, it’s just that he doesn’t fit the GOP as we know it anymore.
No, I think he would clearly run as an indy, and try to siphon off support from both sides.
In that case, the overall likelihood is that he tips the race as a spoiler one way or the other.
Scott has a certain floor he can depend on, the mouth-breather wing of the FL GOP, but the “Crist Republicans” can’t necessarily be counted on to vote their conscience just because he’s running.
I don’t even know what viable candidate the FL Dems could field, but whoever it is will have a baseline too, probably along the lines of Kendrick Meeks, and a certain crossover contingency for an Indie Crist.
I don’t see it. It’s a damned hard trick to pull off winning the Governor’s seat in a major (or any) state as an independent, especially when there are so many advertising dollars floating around out there.
If Crist is to have a serious shot at winning, he’ll switch parties and run as a Dem. Otherwise, while it might throw the GOP/Dem race into a tossup situation, it’s smart money that he would lose in a 3-way as an indie.
If it’s just the governorship, the smart thing to do would be for the Dems to take a dive, Maine-style. They’re not going to flip the legislature in Tallahassee any time soon — getting back over the veto-proof threshold as a minority might be the best they can hope for in the short run.
The Dems are never gonna take a dive in a race of this magnitude, no matter how smart it might be in the long run. “Just the (FL) governorship” is not a phrase in their lexicon.
Is there something wrong with Florida? It must be gerrymandered to hell or something. State-wide and national elections are usually close yet the legislature and congressional representation is so lopsided towards the Republicans. Kinda irritating.
The split in that race was (basically) Rubio-49%, Crist-30%, Meek-20%.
I don’t know Florida politics at all, but it seems from a distance that the combination of
might be able to pull it off.
Or a cabinet secretary in the 2nd Obama administration.
The Crist endorsement ran in the Tampa paper the day before the convention. How more clearly can you read it than poking his finger in the eye of the elephant.
It probably not the last “Republicans for Obama” endorsement that will be published. But it was probably the easiest for the Obama folks to get.
This seems huge to me – especially if Crist campaigns with Obama. Florida appears to be as polarized as a state can be. There are enough on the left that Obama (and Gore) were able to win, but the right is so hard-right that Scott and Rubio were able to beat back more sensible Republicans.
For the Republicans to win they need to peel away disaffected Bush voters who voted for Obama last time, but they can’t afford to lose any McCain voters who can’t handle Ryan’s extremism or Romney’s immensely unlikeable personality.
OFF-TOPIC: Unlikeability is really Romney’s Achilles Heel. Americans vote far too consistently for whichever candid would win the “most popular” award in a high school yearbook. Think back to the horrors of high school and imagine who would have been more popular:
obama-mccain
bush-kerry
bush-gore
clinton-dole
clinton-bush
bush-dukakis
reagan-mondale
reagan-carter
carter-ford
nixon-mcgovern*
nixon-humphrey
lbj-goldwater*
kennedy-nixon
eisenhower-stevenson
The only ones that are even remotely close are the ones with asterisks and those were the two biggest landslides on the list so obviously a “wave” was invalidating the “vote for the cooler guy” tendency. It’s hard to imagine Nixon being “cooler” than anyone, but Hubert Humphrey was really a disaster. And that name! He was definitely not a “Hugh” – he was a Hubert. And a total wuss on Vietnam.
GW Bush is the most extreme example. The guy was the most wretchedly unqualified president in history, but if you go back to the quad at high school and imagine the scene, it’s undeniable that Bush would have been much more comfortable in his own skin than Gore or Kerry.
Now … compare these three: Gore, Kerry, Romney. Remember that policy and inherent morality are irrelevant. In terms of how they carry themselves and how comfortable they are, those are three peas in a pod.
But Romney has an additional flaw – he gets angry. And the way he does that pushes his unlikeability right off the chart. I remember watching the real time comment threads on redstate during the primary debates. All politics aside, Romney is perhaps the most unlikeable candidate in history.