Now things are getting interesting:
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) would not say Sunday which party he’d caucus with if elected to the Senate.
Crist, who left the Republican Party this week to pursue an independent bid for the state’s open Senate seat, said he would be open to voting for a Democrat as majority leader.
“I’ll caucus with the people of Florida,” Crist said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” …
“I might not vote for either one,” Crist said of which party’s member he might support as majority leader. “I’m going to vote for who I think is going to be best for the people of Florida. If is happens to be a Democrat, so be it. If it happens to be a Republican, so be it.”
I think, though, that wobbling in the middle might actually be the worst approach Crist can take. By refusing to pick a side, he pisses off both Dems and Republicans – and frankly, the “middle-of-the-road” true moderates that David Broder fantasizes about every night don’t really exist in any sizable numbers. Maybe Crist can thread the needle, but few have done so before.
earth to Crist…your not going to caucus with the Democrats if you want to do this:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/…
If the Lieberman experience has taught us anything, letting these “Independent” types sit in a caucus is not a pleasant experience. Does either party want another Lieberman sitting within their ranks even if it gives them the majority?
We have Republican and Democrat caucuses for a reason (aka they contain members of those parties). Allowing non-members in the caucus really undermines the point of having a caucus in the first place.
My advice is that both caucuses get together and shun Crist. I doubt he wins, but if he does, make sure he is irrelevant so he will lose in 2016.
I come out tomorrow (pun not originally intended) and say that I’m caucusing with the Democrats, and at this moment try to tack as hard left as I can for a while. (Really hope his campaign isn’t reading SSP, because I’m rooting for Meek…)
he’s the independent who will solve partisan gridlock!–but he can’t even play nice with his party.
he’s the independent who will give us real solutions for problems!– like savingsocial security by cutting waste and fraud.
he’s the independent who will think for himself!–Even though he’s provided very few specifics on his beliefs or policies.
he’s the independent who is above politics!–but his campaigns have always been more politics based than policy.
best thing Crist can do at this point is say he will caucus with the D’s. He can’t just not take a side and expect to win. No, he’ll either play more to the R’s or more to the D’s and he’ll also probably say he would caucus with as well. I would not expect him to get much of any Republican support, even if he says he’ll caucus with them and plays to them. However if he said he would caucus with the Democrats, well that’s a different story. I could see many Democrats supporting him, plus middle of the road independents and some moderate Republicans. If he does become more D friendly then Meek will likely have to go farther to the left to keep his base which could hurt him with moderates and Indies, and they would likely go to Crist. The biggest problem with moving over to team blue is of course his views on HCR. That is a problem, but he could say he could come back on it a little bit and say he supports aspects, that his views were forced upon him by the Republican Party or even that it wasn’t far enough to the left for him. I will admit neither of those is good solutions to his HCR views, it could definitely hurt him greatly with most Democrats and make him look like a flip flopper. All of this being said is that what I want him to do? No, I just said it would be the smartest thing politically for him to do. I plan on fully supporting Kendrick Meek unless something in this race drastically changes. This will undoubtedly be one of the most interesting races to watch this cycle. I got the popcorn ready!
This makes no sense, Crist has to know that he has lost the far right fringe vote. Why did he leave the GOP primary if all he planned to do was continue to try and get their votes?
That Crist was the same guy who won the Florida Gubernatorial race by 7 points in a Democratic year and was once heavily considered to be a VP candidate.
He just wants to take votes from Meek. In the unlikely event he wins he will caucus with the GOP. He is still a registered Republican afterall.
will get 75-80% of the R vote almost no matter what. Crist knows this. Crist is going to have to get votes from the middle and the left because the right is not going to support him in any numbers. This leaves the entire right-wing vote for Rubio, which may be enough all by itself in a 3 way race.
People are pissed at both parties, given a viable third option I think many will say screw you to both parties and vote for the independent. Crist does have some things going for him
– He has name recognition, which puts him ahead of 95% of independent candidates.
– He is the white guy in the election. We all wish race didn’t matter but the facts are it does for some people.
ConservaDems, RINOS, and non-teabaggy Independents.
If you look back to the ’08 primaries, per CNN exit polling, 11% of Republicans were self-described “liberals” and 13% of Democrats were self-described “conservatives.” If you tack on half of self-described moderates from each party, that gives Crist 25% of the GOP vote and 30% of the Dem vote. Presuming Crist nets around 40% of the Indie vote, that gives him around 30% of the overall vote…not enough to win in any case.
in this race if he doesn’t want to be completely irrelevant. Attacking the healthcare bill isn’t going to make that possible.
He needs to attract Dems and Reps both.
And also, duh, it really should go without saying. He is an “independant”. He’ll caucus with whoever he wants (who will let him in), and that is as it should be.
It allows Crist to peel off some Democrats who don’t know Meek or are reluctant to vote him for whatever reason (race, geography, ideology, etc.). Rubio has Republicans to himself and will get some independent support solely because of the electoral climate.
I think this helps Rubio and hurts us.
How is Crist getting the support of 41% of Democrats while Meek only gets 31% of Democrats? Maybe this is just a weird poll, but if the numbers are anything like this poll says than we’ll have a tough job ahead. http://politicalwire.com/archi…
had something to do with this.
http://corner.nationalreview.c…
I bet he really regrets giving up a safe shot at a second term as governor. I suppose he could have switched to the Democratic primary if his views were more liberal on some of the social issues. He’s fairly inoffensive to me simply because he doesn’t usually use the kind of ugly rhetoric we’ve seen from the right so much in the Obama era, but Arlen Specter he is not.