In a move that some would call peculiar and others would call desperate, the NRSC endorsed Florida Governor Charlie Crist in his bid to be the party’s 2010 nominee for the Senate a mere fourteen minutes after he officially announced he was entering the race. Don’t get me wrong, Governor Crist is an exceptional candidate, many in the national party pushed him to run for the Senate, and he has by far the best chance of winning the seat of any Floridian in either party. But by actively recruiting Governor Crist to run for the Senate and endorsing him at the start of the primary campaign not only have NRSC taken away the best chance of Republicans holding onto the Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee, they have also ignored the (conservative) elephant in the room (or the race).

Former Florida Speaker of the House Marco Rubio has plenty reason to be upset. The party wanted to get younger, diversify, and expand its tent while staying true to its conservative roots. You couldn’t ask for a better prototype Senate candidate in Florida than the young, charismatically conservative Cuban-American who went to school at University of Florida and University of Miami Law, married a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, and was a powerhouse in the State Legislature. You couldn’t come up with a better story in Florida politics if you tried. Rubio isn’t just a captivating speaker, he’s an idea’s man in the style of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” as his “100 Ideas” plan proved. So why would NRSC push Governor Crist away from a Gubernatorial re-election campaign and into a Senatorial primary campaign and endorse him outright when Rubio was already in the race?

The obvious answer to anyone who knows Florida politics is that Republicans feel they couldn’t afford to risk losing the seat so they went with the sure bet. Republicans cannot get much more popular nowadays than Charlie Crist is in Florida, and, while Rubio would probably run a competitive race against the Democrat candidate, Crist could beat anybody in a land-slide. In hindsight, Rubio should have probably waited to see whether Crist was going to run for re-election or for the Senate and then ran for whatever Crist was not running for.

For those of you not from the Sunshine State, let me dispel some of the simplistic labels being thrown around. First, Crist is not a RINO from the “Arlen Specter School of Party-Hopping” like some would have you believe. CATO named him the most fiscally conservative Governor in the nation last year, with an 84 rating that left runner-up Governor Mark Sanford 16 points behind. And Rubio is not a right-winger like some might make him out to be. He’s a protégé of Former Governor Jeb Bush, the right Bush to learn from if you want sensible conservatism. This isn’t a race to decide “the soul of the Florida Republican Party,” just its face.

So now Florida Republicans are stuck with two great candidates for Senate. I guess the NRSC head John Cornyn was trying to make things easier for us by breaking his word and endorsing a candidate. In the long-run though, that might prove to be an un-wise move. Cornyn should have let the race take its course instead of giving Crist help he didn’t need and upsetting Cuban-Americans by ignoring Rubio. Regardless, one of these two fine men will be our nominee. I only hope we do not mess this up.

Last 5 posts by Abel S. Delgado

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