Editorials
DEWAYNE WICKHAM
USA Today
Crist’s Change
Putting GOP on Defensive
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.--Charlie Crist returned to his hometown to launch a political campaign that will test whether a popular, moderate Republican can successfully lead an insurgency against the right-wing forces that now control the GOP.
Theodore Roosevelt tried to do that a century ago--and failed.
“My decision to run for the United States Senate as a candidate without party affiliation in many ways says more about our nation and our state than it does about me,” Gov. Crist said, “for me, it’s never been about doing what’s easy. It’s about doing what is right for the people first.”
The moderate Republican was elected governor of the Sunshine State in 2006.
In announcing that he was dropping out of the Republican primary, where polls showed him trailing badly behind former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a darling of the Tea Party movement, Gov. Crist said his decision to run as an independent is the right thing to do for his state, the nation and “for people.”
Critics said it’s a self act of survival because in a three-man race, Gov. Crist leads Rubio and Kendrick Meek, the likely Democratic nominee.
The truth is probably somewhere in between.
The more important question raised by Gov. Crist’s political rebellion is whether he can succeed where Theodore Roosevelt failed when he bolted the GOP in 1912 to mount a third-party campaign for the White House.
The former president wanted to blunt his party’s shift to the right, a move he signaled in a speech two years earlier, endorsing what he termed the “New Nationalism.”
“ ‘The New Nationalism’ puts the national need before the sectional or personal advantage,” Roosevelt said.
“It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues.”
Gov. Crist sounded a similar tone when he announced his decision.
People have “had enough of political fighting,” he said. “They’re tired of the games and the name-calling and the politics of destruction,” he said. “I know they want progress and not gridlock.”
Though ostensibly directed at both political parties, the Florida governor’s words were meant to explain his break with the GOP, which seems determined to clear its ranks of anyone to the left of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (Rep., Ky.).
The Republican Party seeks to revive itself not by broadening its ideological base, but by constricting it.
Having long ago chased liberals and most moderate officeholders from its ranks, the GOP is now going after politicians who are thought to be not conservative enough.
Mr. Rubio’s challenge to Crist is the most important of these bloodlettings, coming, as it does, in the political bellwether state of Florida.
By choosing to run as independent, Gov. Crist has launched a counterattack that puts the GOP on the defensive and threatens to irreparably rupture the Grand Old Party.
Already, tampabay.com reported, his move has won the backing of Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneger of California, another moderate Republican, who has fallen into disfavor with his GOP base.
And it’s a good bet it is being closely watched by other Republican moderates, such as U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Rep., Maine).
If Gov. Crist wins, conservative control the GOP could fracture.
If he loses, the Republican Party will slip deeper into a political bog that eventually will devour it.
