Remember the old saw about the man who murdered his mother and father and then sought leniency from the court on the basis of being a poor orphan?  Meet Charlie Crist, the lonely victim:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says it is “very lonely” running as an Independent.

Since he quit his party, Crist says he has discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends who dropped Crist after he left the GOP.

That’s funny — donors who thought they were supporting a Republican discovered that they had been duped, too.  Do you think those two developments could be related?  Not in Charlie Crist’s world:

Crist has lost so many campaign staffers that his sister is now running his third-party effort.

“When you’re not affiliated with a party, it can be very lonely, particularly initially,” Crist told The Hill in an hourlong phone interview. …

“It just became increasingly apparent to me that a segment of the party was drifting so far to the right that it just wasn’t a place where I felt comfortable anymore,” Crist said.

Er, what?  Crist won the endorsement of the NRSC and was the Republican establishment’s obvious favorite.  Marco Rubio had to run against the arrayed power of the national party, not Charlie Crist, who got handed their help the moment he committed to the Senate race.  The big difference is that Rubio knew how to campaign and stuck to political principles, while Charlie Crist stuck to the one principle that matters to Charlie Crist … which is Charlie Crist.

And when did this drift to the right become so “apparent” that it forced Crist to reject the establishment that had embraced him?  It had to have been after April 9th, 2010, when Crist insisted that he would remain a Republican, and April 30th, 2010, when he bailed on the GOP.  What radical turn did the national party take in those 21 days that was  more significant than the butt-kicking Rubio was giving him in the polls?

As for those donors and staffers, perhaps Crist might have kept more of them had he not lied about refunding donations.  That reversal took even less time.  On May 1st, he offered “pro-rated” refunds, and reiterated that offer the next day.  By May 12th, he reneged.

Charlie isn’t lonely because he’s not a Republican.  He’s lonely because he’s a phony.

Update: Police arrested Jim Greer, Crist’s handpicked choice to run the Florida GOP, earlier today:

The former chairman of the Florida Republican Party was arrested Wednesday, officials said, though they did not release the charges and there was no immediate word on whether they were linked to a probe of his finances.

Jim Greer, who had been handpicked to lead the state GOP by Gov. Charlie Crist, was arrested at his home near Orlando, Seminole County authorities said.  …

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been investigating Greer since an audit found he awarded himself and his executive director a fundraising contract that paid them about $200,000.

The department declined to comment ahead of a news conference scheduled for later Wednesday morning.

Greer owned 60 percent of a corporation set up to raise money for the party and former party executive director Delmar Johnson owned the other 40 percent. That corporation got a 10 percent commission on money it brought in, the audit found.

Greer and Delmar Johnson were both close allies to Crist.