As an Independent: Run, Charlie, run!
By Gimleteye
From the Eye on Miami blog
In either case, whether Charlie Crist runs as a Republican or as a newly declared Independent — his future with the GOP is a written chapter. Done. Finished. Over. But his career as a public servant in Florida may just be starting. You see, the polls show that in a three-way race, independent Charlie Crist could win — beating Marco Rubio and the Democratic challenger, Congressman Kendrick Meek. This would drive the GOP apoplectic, because it would not only reinforce that idea that Floridians are tired of the same old, same old; people also don’t believe that running willy-nilly over to Marco Rubio just because he delivers a carefully canned speech well means he ought to represent a state that is leaning more and more Democratic.
Let me tell you why I like Charlie Crist. The guy who has been amiable his entire political career has come face-to-face with the ugly elements of the GOP in Florida. If he didn’t understand what he was dealing with before, he surely gets it now and he could do a hell-of-a-job pulling down the curtains to show the puppeteers manipulating the party. There is a radical fringe of the GOP that is determined to plant its flag on Charlie Crist’s dead political career. As far as I’m concerned — and there are a ton of people like me: that is just plain wrong.
This business of beating up Charlie Crist because he embraced the president? Of garroting him politically because Florida accepted stimulus money? Of standing up to the craziness of FCAT and judging teachers by how well they teach a test? It is madness. Charlie Crist should run as a populist. He should run against the forces in his former party that greased the tracks for the worst economic crisis since the Depression. We’re waiting for a new Charlie Crist to emerge; unshackled from the nonsense and speaking truth to power.
For Florida I say to Charlie Crist: Run, Charlie, run.
Gimleteye is the name used by Alan Farago in his Eye on Miami blog. For the past 20 years Farago has written, worked and volunteered to advance civic engagement and issues related to the environment and politics.
