Patterico's Pontifications

6/16/2010

The Anybody-but-Marco Party

Filed under: Politics — DRJ @ 5:37 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Florida Democrats are flirting with throwing their support to Charlie Crist because of Jeff Greene, a troublesome candidate in the Democratic primary.

It’s tempting to smirk at the Democrats’ problem candidates in Florida and South Carolina (ironically, both are named Greene), but then I remember Mark Sanford and Lindsey Graham and it’s not so funny.

— DRJ

UPDATE: Ace points out another one of those problems that make Party officials want to squirm. This one is in a GOP Congressional run-off race in North Carolina.

10 Responses to “The Anybody-but-Marco Party”

  1. Do you know that the Florida GOP has a “meltdown mogul” of their own–he’s running for governor. His flaw is that the very large health care company he ran defrauded Medicare rather massively. He was not involved in the fraud himself, but in a state where medicining enormous numbers of Medicare patients is one of the biggest industries, and a state which is one of the prime centers of Medicare fraud, that might not go over too well.(Not to mention what this suggests about his executive abilities, if he didn’t have a clue about what was going on.) Just like in Greene’s case getting involved in the mortgage free fall might not be seen as a good idea in a state that is one of the worst sufferers of the mortgage “crisis”.
    Then there is the fact that the state GOP’s spending scandal has implicated Crist and revealed Rubio as just another politician trying to suck as much as he can from the public trough.

    Popcorn anyone?

    kishnevi (7b38bb)

  2. So how is this bad?

    Are ALL the Dems in Florida really going to line up behind Crist? How can this not be a Rubio ad campaign all by itself? Will non-Kool Aid drinking Dems really get behind this?

    How does Rubio not roll in November?

    the bhead (a31060)

  3. bhead–Crist has always positioned himself as Democrat lite, so it’s easy for Democrats to line up behind him if they don’t like Greene. And he’s always been relatively personally popular.
    Add to that the fact that Rubio, despite his Tea Party appeal, is deeply enmeshed in the GOP establishment, and as I said in my first comment, is not at all averse to spending other people’s money when he can get away with (and apparently only paying it back when he gets caught).
    Add to that the fact that Florida has a lot of conservatives, but also a lot of liberals or semi liberals. Jeb Bush won because he was personally popular, and Crist rode into office on Jeb’s shoulders. But Rubio is not, and will have a much harder time, at least for the first time. (If he’s elected, the incumbent factor will of course kick in six years from now.)

    Also don’t underestimate the impact the immigration debate might have between now and November. There are plenty of immigrants here, mostly from Latin America or the Caribbean, mostly legally here, and in large proportion naturalized and ready to vote. That’s why Rubio hemmed and hawed around the Arizona law.

    kishnevi (7b38bb)

  4. I forgot one other thing–thanks to his veto a few weeks ago, the teachers union will be quite willing to help Crist with contributions, volunteers, etc.

    kishnevi (7b38bb)

  5. Bill McCollum has needed a wake-up for a long time.
    He has, in his attitude towards elected office, struck me as Florida’s own Bob Dole: He would wait around until it was “his turn”. It is unfortunate for him, that his accomplishments in the many offices he has held have never reached the souring rhetoric of his campaigning.
    The Invasion of the Tea Partiers is an uncomfortable reality-check for the Country-Club GOP.

    AD - RtR/OS! (eef339)

  6. Comment by kishnevi — 6/16/2010 @ 6:53 pm

    Why would a legal immigrant community have any problem with attempts to deal with illegal immigration?
    After all the hoops and hurdles they’ve had to jump through and over, one would think they would appreciate that the Rule of Law was being enforced upon those not so inclined to observe that law.

    AD - RtR/OS! (eef339)

  7. I updated the post.

    DRJ (d43dcd)

  8. AD-RtR/OS–all the hoops and hurdles they’ve had to jump through and over
    They are therefore understand very well that real immigration reform has nothing to do with enforcement or amnesty, but throwing out the hoops and hurdles. Not to mention the xenophobic implications which would apply as much to Lincoln and Mario Diaz Balart as Jose the gardener from Sonora.

    People will always come here so long as the US is better off economically than their home countries. If they can’t do it legally, they will do it legally. Reform the system to let them come here, and everything else would fall into place.

    And yes, you could work it so the immigrants would not get welfare benefits for a certain number of years. Amnesty would not be needed–all the illegal immigrant now here would need to do is fly back home, and get his entry visa.

    And naturally, enforcement would not be a problem because very few would be kept out–and those few would be criminals and jihadis.

    I myself think that Obama is committed to immigration reform because of his economic policies. He’s slowing turning the US into a third world country to which people will not want to immigrate.

    kishnevi (96eedd)

  9. This guy is an embarassment to every Alpha male in America. Instead of taking the high road and benefitting in the long run, he decided to become a whore to get elected. He could have supported Rubio and been a man but he went in another direction. How does a real man bend over and change his position on something like killing babies? What kind of man does that? How is it even possible that a real man changes his position and beliefs on important things based upon polls and political influences? How does one go through life like that? Outside the Beltway and politics this is viewed as “Queening Up”. I can’t imagine going through life not standing for anything, at the whim of whoever is in control, and being viewed as a “thing” to be used by a group of people to achieve a political goal. As far as I’m concerned these are the same guys that hide under the bed when there’s a fight brewing who leave their wives and children to fend for themselves. Anybody that votes for this guy deserves everything they get… and it won’t be good.

    Dave B (3e5e9e)

  10. Crist is another piece of human waste who should flushed into the gulf with other animal carcasses.

    Maybe Charlie will finally explain what he was doing in that “shared apartment” with Mark Foley in Tallahassee for all those years in the State Government???????

    Awful piece of trash he is.

    HeavenSent (a9126d)


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