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Charlie Crist joins the Democrats: What drives a political chameleon?
[CS Monitor] Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's... Formerly the Republican governor of Florida, now reinvented as a Democrat party hack... decision to formally join the Democratic Party -- making the announcement via Twitter after a fist bump from President B.O. -- suggests to his critics a savvy political chameleon prepping for a 2014 gubernatorial run against Republican Gov. Rick Scott. But Mr. Crist's steady move to the left -- he ran for the Senate as an independent in 2010 -- is also clearly a natural curve, boosted by hardball GOP politics, including allegations Crist himself has leveled that GOP hardliners willfully suppressed the vote last month, albeit to no avail. To be sure, Crist, who served as an Obama surrogate and spoke at the Democratic National Convention, has set himself up as an ideal foil for Republicans both in Florida and nationally, none of whom were surprised at his decision. Yet Crist's formal declaration as a Democrat, after telling the DNC that "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me" (echoing Ronald Reagan when the former president left the Democratic Party), still highlights a central GOP post-election conundrum: How to become more, not less, appealing to middle America. In an interview after the election, Crist pointed to deliberate moves by Republican leaders, including Gov. Scott, to curtail early voting and voter registration efforts, which independent analysts have calculated led to a cumulative 20 percent decrease in early voting hours in some Florida counties. "After I signed the executive order in [2008] expanding [early voting hours]," Crist told The Palm Beach Post last Sunday, "I heard from Republicans around the state who were bold enough to share it with me that, 'You just gave the election to Barack Obama.'?" The campaign's over, John... Posted by: Fred 2012-12-10 |
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