Question: Is Florida Governor Charlie Crist a Republican or a Democrat?
Answer: Yes. Depending on what's popular at the moment. Just as one can estimate the time of day by watching heliotropic plants as they lean toward the sun, one can tell an election is nearing when Charlie "Rorschach" Crist starts changing his positions, leaning in the direction of what's popular. Taking a page from Flip Wilson's Reverend Leroy, Crist belongs to the Political Church of What's Happenin' Now." He's rotating his political stock, to insure that the freshest ideas from polls and focus groups are what he puts out front for the voting public. This is easy enough for a politician who, as Crist has repeatedly demonstrated, has no philosophical core beyond the core belief that he belongs in high office.
As Crist now wishes to be a U.S. Senator from Florida, the public he's most interested in is Republican primary voters, who this year are suffering from an acute case of RINO fatigue. The flavor of the year is clearly conservatism. So a revision of Crist's recent political career, which has been at least as Democrat-friendly as it has been conservative since Charlie was handed the keys to Florida's governor's mansion in 2007, is much in need if Crist is to prevail over conservative former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio in an August primary. The latest polls show Crist maintains a lead over the lesser known Rubio. But that lead is disappearing faster than beer at a frat party.
Just a couple of examples of the new-improved Charlie, fresh from the re-write department: Take President Obama's $7.87 billion stimulus slush fund (please). Crist didn't just take money for Florida from this failed policy after it was adopted, for which he could not be criticized because the money would have been spent somewhere anyway. He supported the policy before it was adopted. He urged the members of Florida's congressional delegation to vote for it, and went so far as to appear with Obama in Florida to whoop up the plan. He decided to sign on with a popular Democratic rookie president and his budget-busting plan at a time when other Republicans were supporting an approach that included far less federal spending and targeted tax cuts to stimulate the private sector.
Crist made his political bed last winter. But now that our rookie president is not so popular (and is likely headed back to AA ball after 2012, there to learn how to hit right-handed pitching), not to mention that his spending-on-steroids plan has yielded little more than mega-debt and promises of inflation to follow, Crist wishes to sleep elsewhere. He now claims he didn't advocate for the policy, even though he's captured on film multiple times and places doing and saying exactly that. He says now he wouldn't have supported the policy had he been in the Senate and was just looking out that Florida received its fair share of the federal boodle. South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson could tell you what this claim is.