Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Could Charlie Crist Upset Florida's Republican Tea Party?

Florida's Republican nobs have passed judgment on Governor Charlie Crist's ambitions for the US Senate - he isn't rightwing enough to deserve the nomination. So Crist is planning to run as an independent which, according to McClatchey, has his party utterly apoplectic:

You've never seen such fuming, whining and grinding of capped teeth. And that's not from voters — that's from Republican leaders, who are pitching a hissy fit.

They want the governor to shut up and go away, but he's not playing ball. They want him to yield the stage to Marco Rubio, a robotic right-wing smoothie, but Charlie insists on hanging around for an encore.

...Not so long ago, the governor was their golden boy, and not just because of his trademark tan. Most of the party's top dogs were singing his praises for the Senate
.
But try as he might -- and at times it was pathetic to watch -- Crist just couldn't swerve hard enough to the right. His belated bashing of President Obama sounded halfhearted compared with the spittle-flecked ravings on Fox News.


The governor is famous for tacking with the political breeze, but even he couldn't pull off a convincing ideological swoop to ultra-conservativism.

That's the irreconcilable problem: Crist is a moderate in a party whose leaders no longer tolerate it.

Always distrustful of him, Republican screamers officially turned on the governor after he accepted federal stimulus benefits. In a state suffering from brutal unemployment and epidemic home foreclosures, only a moron would have turned down the money.

And that says it all. Charlie isn't moronic enough to deserve the Republican nomination in Florida, the state where he's the sitting governor. Charlie didn't measure up to the, "spittle flecked ravings" of today's Republican leadership.

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