One More Reason Not To Trust The NRSC With Your Lunch Money

Because the candidate they endorsed is dropping in the polls.

This is why the NRSC needed to wait until after the primary. Not before when, for example, a young, charismatic young man may emerge who will be a much, much better candidate that Charlie Crist.

For the first time, Quinnipiac finds the former state House Speaker Marco Rubio leading the formerly very popular — and still well-known — Gov. Charlie Crist by a margin of 47% to 44%.

“Who would have thunk it? A former state lawmaker virtually unknown outside of his South Florida home whose challenge to an exceedingly popular sitting governor for a U.S. Senate nomination had many insiders scratching their heads,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “He enters the race 31 points behind and seven months later sneaks into the lead.”

“And, the horse race numbers are not a fluke,” Brown added. “Rubio also tops Crist on a number of other measurements from registered Republicans, who are the only folks who can vote in the primary. Rubio’s grassroots campaigning among Republican activists around the state clearly has paid off.”

And we suspect the poll is only telling part of the tale for Rubio because the energy is on his side

RELATED: Donations to Rubio and Crist seem to be matching the polls. Crist's numbers have dropped off slightly. Rubio has had his best quarter yet.

Poll results via Ace of Spades.

Cross posted here At The Point Of A Gun.

Ace of Spades Investigates Illinois Senate Race!

Kirk or Hughes for Illinois?

Cut down the cap and trade Gange of 8 traitor Mark Kirk before he spreads to another seat!

I Can't Find This Guy's Name In The Phone Book But Would Like To Buy Him A Beer

Maybe two.

Dan Riehl has the screencap of the decade.

I think that gentleman still donated too much.

And Now A Word From Barack Obama's Favorite World Leader...

This Was NOT a GOP Victory...

And so the oldest, and arguably the foulest political dynasty ever foisted off on this Republic is reduced to one drunken, pill-popping freak in Rhode Island... My full and unqualified congratulations both to that outnumbered band of conservatives in Massachusetts who have held their principles firm in the face of overwhelming numbers and even abandonment by their own party, and to all those Democrats and independent Massachusetts voters who realized there was no future in following Barack Obama and the Democratic Party machine deeper into moral and fiscal bankruptcy.  We welcome you back to the political life of this wonderful country, and look forward to working with you to make it again the shining triumph it was always meant to be. This was not a GOP victory tonight.  If it had been left to the GOP, to Michael Steele and John Cornyn, Scott Brown would have vanished into obscurity and Ms. Coakley would have waltzed into Washington uncontested. This was, yes, a victory for the 'tea baggers,' the scorned, mocked American men and women from all parties and no party who came together to reject the politics of the insiders club in DC, GOP and Democrat, to reject the trading of favors paid for by our security, our solvency and our children's futures, to reject the notion of government by the mutal consent of well-placed incompetents who understand their own arcane parliamentary games and nothing else about this magnificent, diverse, yes, exceptional nation. And so to Nancy Pelosi, to Harry Reid, yes, to Michael Steele and especially to that jug-eared store mannequin in the Oval Office, I say again, "That's one... ...and she's just the first."

It's Worth Reading The New York Times For This

Picture credit NYT. Picture benefit for the ladies.

Marco Rubio is featured in the New York Times Magazine this month. You wouldn't know it from the ten paragraphs in the story.

Part of it is confusing because Mark Leibovich muses about why Crist is a 'scourge' among Republicans:

Crist has become a conservative scourge, for reasons he seems at a loss to understand and that in some ways have nothing to do with him.

When he answers the question a earlier in that paragraph:

[T]he governor’s biggest sin was his support for the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic-stimulus package.

Not sure how Leibovich is dense enough to write that. Maybe he's like the beaten woman who goes back to her abusive husband. He just doesn't get it.

The takeaway quote from Rubio that I liked:

“I’m not a fan of personality-based politics,” Rubio said. “Very third worldish.” People who pin their trust and faith in a person are bound to be disappointed, he said. “I’m just a messenger for a set of ideas.”

It's eight pages long, a novel in the age of the blogosphere but please read the entire thing. Except for the last part of the last page. Only in the New York Times would a profile about Marco Rubio begins and end talking about Crist.

Cross posted At The Point Of A Gun.

Florida GOP Chairman Resigns

Jim Greer, Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, has resigned. This is excellent news for those of us who believe that candidates should be chosen by the voters rather than appointed by behind doors by a cabal of party insiders.

"I cannot be a participant in the shredding and tearing in the fabric of the Republican Party," said Greer, blaming his conservative critics for their plan to stage a divisive fight over his post at a party meeting Saturday. His critics were willing to "burn the house down and try to destroy the Republican Party," Greer said.

Greer, a close ally of Governor Charlie Crist, is the highest-profile casualty to date of the conservative insurgency that, in Florida, backs Marco Rubio against Crist.

"I am not a purist," Greer said, begging his fellow Republicans to "stop the fight between moderates and conservatives [and] focus on electing Republicans in 2010."

Greer sounds eerily like Sen. John Cornyn, head of the NRSC. Both cling to the fallacy that the voters don’t know what is good for them and therefore need the “leadership” to make all their important decisions for them. The Florida race between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio is a perfect example of this line of elitist thought.

Crist and Rubio both easily beat Kendrick Meek, the likely Democratic candidate in the Florida senate race. Yet only Crist received the backing of Greer and Cornyn. Why? Because for all their bluster about getting Republicans elected, Greer and Cornyn don’t want just any Republican elected, they want their Republican elected even if the voters want someone else.

Voters expressing a preference for one candidate over another is not tantamount to “…the shredding and tearing in the fabric of the Republican Party,". It is democracy. Greer either doesn’t understand the process, or more likely, doesn’t believe in the process. Either way, his resignation is good news for Florida Republicans.

Cross posted at Carol’s Closet

Gov. Charlie Crist Leaves Tallahassee and Moves to Some Place Called 'Da Nile'

Exhibit A from the St. Pete Times:

"All in all, I think it's been a good year — a good year in challenging times," Crist said. "These are tough times. It sure hasn't been dull, to say the least, by any stretch."

If Good Time Charlie thinks it's been a good year he sure hasn't been hanging out in Florida.

Lets review:

He miscalculated the danger of his "man hug" with President Barack Obama in support of the Democrats' stimulus package. He signed a no-new taxes pledge only to raise taxes weeks later to balance the state budget. And the biggest contributor in his campaign for U.S. Senate, Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Rothstein, was charged in a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme.

Speaking of that stimulus package that Crist supported and then denied that he supported and then denied that he denied supporting, what has Florida gotten out Crist's great big ol' man hug?

When Crist took office in 2007, the unemployment rate was 3.3 percent — less than a third of what it is now as more than 1 million Floridians can't find work. One in every 705 Florida homes was in foreclosure when he took office. Now the foreclosure rate is 1 of 165, according to RealtyTrac data service. (emphais added)

Even Crist's staunchest critics say many of Florida's woes are largely beyond his control. But they question whether Crist did what he could when he could. When the economy deteriorated, Crist paid visits to regional unemployment centers and held roundtable discussions with veterans and real estate agents, but he didn't propose and implement specific policies to halt the tide of foreclosures and layoffs. (emphasis added)

Crist has put his vastly unpopular "green policies" on the back burner but he himself admits that it is only a temporary move. He is currently touting "light rail" as his signature program. Apparently he is unaware that government backed railroad transportation has had a long history of abject failure.

Most damaging for Crist is the perception that Crist really doesn't stand for anything and that he is one of those politicians who sticks his finger in the air in order to determine the direction of the political winds. Consider this:

Newly married to New York socialite and businesswoman Carole Rome, Crist spent the days just before 2009 hunting for Christmas gifts in the rural North Florida antique mecca of Havana. There Crist ran into a local who paid him such a compliment that he pulled a reporter aside and made her repeat it. (emphasis added)

"I believe he's a closet Democrat," Shirley Aaron said.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Crist said. "We have, in Florida, Republicans and Democrats and independents, but we're all Floridians first."

If Crist knew or cared about the profound ideological differences between the two political parties he wouldn't feel complimented by being called a closet Democrat. But for Crist, ideology is only skin deep and can be easily shed when it no longer suits Crist's needs.

Now that Crist has tanked in the polls, he is trying make up his lost ground but pretending that everything is just fine in Florida won't get him very far. Come the August primary Florida voters will be voting on whether they believe things are just fine and who they will trust to represent them. I don't expect that a year from now Crist will be sounding as enthusiastic as he is trying to sound now.

Cross posted at Carol's Closet