Markos "Kos" Moulitsas of the Daily Kos has a dream that one day Charlie Crist will do some soul searching, look deep inside himself, and finally come out... as a Democrat. And it will all be Marco Rubio's fault.
See, Rubio is calling upon the dark forces of the right wing -- the wingnut blogs, the garbage- spewing talk radio hosts, the ideological PACs and interest groups -- to create a tsunami that will ruin Crist's good name among Republicans, thus causing him to lose the primary. Fear of this will cause Governor Crist to switch parties, and Kos predicts this will happen by the end of 2009, "end of Q1 2010 at the latest."
He'll have a tough call to make: go down with his party, or pull a Specter and ditch it for better electoral prospects on a different line. That could mean a switch to the Democratic Party where he'd likely be no worse than the other senator from Florida, Bill Nelson -- a marginally good Democrat, a step up from Landrieu, Nebraska's Nelson, and the Wal Mart Twins (and no better). Or it could mean an independent run, where he might be able to pull a Lieberman (complete with a Joementum fundraising campaign visit) and work to attract independents, mainstream Republicans, and Democrats disaffected by their poor field and try to win a split three-way field.Kos might be overestimating the power of the right-wing grassroots in Florida, though. Remember, Mike Huckabee (who has endorsed Rubio) took only 13% of the vote in the state's closed Republican presidential primary. Meanwhile, John McCain soared to victory with a boost from Crist's endorsement.
In the latest Mason-Dixon poll, Charlie Crist led Rubio 51% to 23%. Of course, the match looked better for Rubio when you counted only likely Republican voters who have heard of both candidates. Crist's lead tightened to 33-31%. Then again, those Republican voters who haven't heard of Rubio yet are probably not: (a) the most politically engaged Republican and (b) members of the hardline right who pay attention to the likes of Huckabee and RedState.com.
