bobbyw24
11-12-2009, 06:32 AM
Dan McCarthy had several good posts on last week’s elections and the internal problems of both parties. These are worth revisiting in light of the news that the Club for Growth endorsed Marco Rubio in his Senate primary challenge against Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.
I still don’t quite understand the idea, which some conservative bloggers have floated in the last week, that NY-23 has some bearing on the Florida Senate primary. Yes, I see the dynamic of a “moderate” being challenged from the right, but everything else is different. For one thing, most Floridians and even most Republicans in Florida like Crist. On the political spectrum, he is far to the right of someone like Scozzafava, so there are far fewer substantive reasons why conservatives would want to defeat Crist. If it was absurd to describe a liberal Republican such as Scozzafava as a “moderate,” Crist also doesn’t really deserve that label if “moderate” Republicanism refers to the politics of Sens. Collins and Snowe.
Actually, Crist’s “moderation” is to some extent a fiction that he has perpetuated to maintain his electoral viability in a state that has seen several House seats switch to the Democrats and which voted for Obama. Crist is pro-life; he’s just not very vocal or demonstrative about it. As a governor, there aren’t many things he could do on this question anyway. Crist supported the state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage last year, but did not actively campaign for it. This was actually very much like President Bush’s hands-off approach to the issue in the ‘04 cycle: he formally opposed gay marriage, but wasn’t going to spend much time on it. Partly because of George Bush’s reputation for personal religiosity, the voters who might have held this against him never cared that his support was minimal. Crist’s calculation seems to have been that there are not many voters who would punish him for being lukewarm on the issue, but he could lose many more by appearing “strident” or “intolerant,” and the measure was going to prevail regardless of how actively he campaigned for it. Simply by supporting the measure, which ended up winning 61% support in a year when Obama received a little over 50% of the vote, Crist aligned himself with a significant majority of the voters, but he did so in a way that did not identify him with one faction in his party.
I don’t begrudge Crist’s conservative opponents their desire to compel him to take positions that are even more in agreement with their views. That is their prerogative, and it may even do some good on one or two issues, but it is curious how Crist’s successful political tactics are being held against him at a time when Republicans are no longer governing very many large states and when the party has declined nationally as well. This is the same governor who campaigned actively for an amendment that reduced property taxes, so why would he be a top target of the Club for Growth? On policy, Crist is hard to distinguish from the tradition of former Gov. Jeb Bush, who angered a lot of conservatives with his liberalizing views on immigration but who has otherwise been widely respected and admired by many rank-and-file conservatives. Obviously, I am far removed from both Bush and Crist, so this does not recommend Crist to me, but what makes Crist the unacceptable “moderate” in the minds of movement activists that does not similarly tar Jeb Bush?
A large state primary for governor is significantly unlike a special House election. If nationalizing the House race was the wrong way to go, as I thought it was, how much more disconnected from Floridian political realities would a Senate campaign that has served as a protest against “moderate” collaboration with a national Democratic agenda be? As they are elections for the lower, popular chamber, House races are better-suited to enforcing a party line. There are fewer voters in these elections, which increases the impact of highly motivated and ideological voters, and this is especially true in lower-turnout special elections. A statewide race, even if it is a primary, weakens the influence of activists and ideological enforcers.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2159/2078205025_f8b322d4d8.jpg?v=0
Now maybe Rubio won’t run a Hoffmanesque campaign that privileges ideology over local issues, but to a large degree Hoffman’s campaign became a cipher for national Republican and conservative objectives because his campaign was being built up by an influx of national money and the interventions of movement interest groups. If Crist can use his considerable statewide popularity (something that is all the more remarkable during a recession) to make the primary into a contest between candidates who are interested respectively in Floridian concerns and national GOP hobbyhorses, Rubio has little chance.
No one will deny that Crist has lately made something of a sport of making political moves that seem calculated to
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/11/09/rubio-and-crist/
I still don’t quite understand the idea, which some conservative bloggers have floated in the last week, that NY-23 has some bearing on the Florida Senate primary. Yes, I see the dynamic of a “moderate” being challenged from the right, but everything else is different. For one thing, most Floridians and even most Republicans in Florida like Crist. On the political spectrum, he is far to the right of someone like Scozzafava, so there are far fewer substantive reasons why conservatives would want to defeat Crist. If it was absurd to describe a liberal Republican such as Scozzafava as a “moderate,” Crist also doesn’t really deserve that label if “moderate” Republicanism refers to the politics of Sens. Collins and Snowe.
Actually, Crist’s “moderation” is to some extent a fiction that he has perpetuated to maintain his electoral viability in a state that has seen several House seats switch to the Democrats and which voted for Obama. Crist is pro-life; he’s just not very vocal or demonstrative about it. As a governor, there aren’t many things he could do on this question anyway. Crist supported the state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage last year, but did not actively campaign for it. This was actually very much like President Bush’s hands-off approach to the issue in the ‘04 cycle: he formally opposed gay marriage, but wasn’t going to spend much time on it. Partly because of George Bush’s reputation for personal religiosity, the voters who might have held this against him never cared that his support was minimal. Crist’s calculation seems to have been that there are not many voters who would punish him for being lukewarm on the issue, but he could lose many more by appearing “strident” or “intolerant,” and the measure was going to prevail regardless of how actively he campaigned for it. Simply by supporting the measure, which ended up winning 61% support in a year when Obama received a little over 50% of the vote, Crist aligned himself with a significant majority of the voters, but he did so in a way that did not identify him with one faction in his party.
I don’t begrudge Crist’s conservative opponents their desire to compel him to take positions that are even more in agreement with their views. That is their prerogative, and it may even do some good on one or two issues, but it is curious how Crist’s successful political tactics are being held against him at a time when Republicans are no longer governing very many large states and when the party has declined nationally as well. This is the same governor who campaigned actively for an amendment that reduced property taxes, so why would he be a top target of the Club for Growth? On policy, Crist is hard to distinguish from the tradition of former Gov. Jeb Bush, who angered a lot of conservatives with his liberalizing views on immigration but who has otherwise been widely respected and admired by many rank-and-file conservatives. Obviously, I am far removed from both Bush and Crist, so this does not recommend Crist to me, but what makes Crist the unacceptable “moderate” in the minds of movement activists that does not similarly tar Jeb Bush?
A large state primary for governor is significantly unlike a special House election. If nationalizing the House race was the wrong way to go, as I thought it was, how much more disconnected from Floridian political realities would a Senate campaign that has served as a protest against “moderate” collaboration with a national Democratic agenda be? As they are elections for the lower, popular chamber, House races are better-suited to enforcing a party line. There are fewer voters in these elections, which increases the impact of highly motivated and ideological voters, and this is especially true in lower-turnout special elections. A statewide race, even if it is a primary, weakens the influence of activists and ideological enforcers.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2159/2078205025_f8b322d4d8.jpg?v=0
Now maybe Rubio won’t run a Hoffmanesque campaign that privileges ideology over local issues, but to a large degree Hoffman’s campaign became a cipher for national Republican and conservative objectives because his campaign was being built up by an influx of national money and the interventions of movement interest groups. If Crist can use his considerable statewide popularity (something that is all the more remarkable during a recession) to make the primary into a contest between candidates who are interested respectively in Floridian concerns and national GOP hobbyhorses, Rubio has little chance.
No one will deny that Crist has lately made something of a sport of making political moves that seem calculated to
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/11/09/rubio-and-crist/