Why, that sneaky, underhanded Marco Rubio campaign! Imagine, using Governor Charlie Crist’s own words against him in a web ad. Crist has belatedly awoken to the threat from the Florida House Speaker in the Republican primary for the open Senate seat, and has begun attacking Rubio to blunt his momentum. Rubio allows Crist to speak for himself for over two minutes in this ad that paints Crist as an Obama man:
The complicating factor here may be that Crist is right — to a point. Any healthy democracy depends on the losing side of elections accepting and adopting the winner as legitimate. The failure of the Left to do that in 2000 created a number of political ills that have not yet disappeared. When Obama won, he became President to all Americans, not just those who voted for him. Unfortunately, Obama himself has difficulty remembering that, especially with his weird war on Fox News and the hackery that his press shop has promulgated in support of it.
Nor is Crist entirely wrong on his role as “Florida’s CEO,” which is to do what’s right for his state rather than worry overmuch about partisan politics. However, it does seem very debatable that the best thing for Florida was to suck capital out of the markets, especially future markets, in order to spend profusely on a stimulus package that was short on stimulus and very long on Democratic Party pork items. It might have helped to withhold his effusive support until Obama forced Nancy Pelosi to give Republicans effective input on drafting Porkulus, which would have allowed many of them to vote for the bill. Crist and others like him put a false imprimatur of bipartisanship on a process that was all sharp elbows from the Democrats, capped by Obama’s proclamation to Capitol Hill Republicans that “I won.”
And, of course, in February Crist wanted to ride Obama’s popularity for as long as he could. Now that Obama has come back down to Earth in polling, Crist will resent the idea that he was a lackey for the administration, the clear thrust of the ad here. However, Crist didn’t stand up when it counted — which is why this ad is so effective. Expect to see 30-second and 1-minute broadcast versions of this later in the campaign.
Update: Fixed the pic. Sorry about that!
