I suspect Crist will stink so bad in Florida that he will finish BEHIND the Dem.
Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
April 29, 2010
In This Issue . . .
1. This Charlie Horse Can't Win the Race
2. Sooner or Later, Frankenstein Always Turns on His Creator
3. AP: Horrific Draconian Arizona Immigration Law Somehow Achieving Stated Goal
4. Addenda
Here's your morning Jolt!
Enjoy,
Jim
1. This Charlie Horse Can't Win the Race
You're going to get beat, Charlie, and I'm going to enjoy it. It didn't have to be this way; you notice Mark Kirk got through a Republican primary without insisting that everyone in the GOP had become an extremist except him. Mike Castle's probably going to get through his primary fine. It's this "primary voters have to love me, if they don't, it means the party's been hijacked by radicals" victim card that is so darn tiresome. You know what Jim Jeffords, Dede Scozzafava, Lincoln Chafee and Arlen Specter all have in common? By the time they switched parties/endorsed the other side, they were so politically weakened they would've had a tough time outpolling Jesse James among women voters. Nobody switches parties when they're a winner.
I've noted that I don't agree often with Daniel Larison, but I'd offer an "Amen" to this: "No one has to agree with or even like Marco Rubio to appreciate the one service he has done for Florida, which is to expose how Crist's desire for personal advancement trumps any and all other considerations. Whatever their reasons for the Republican rank-and-file's rejection of Crist, there are few candidates more deserving of rejection than Crist because of the sheer opportunism that has marked his career and which he will continue to display this year."
Red State's Erick Erickson has earned the right to an "I told you so" or two: "Charlie Crist will not only run as an independent in Florida, but he has also reserved all of his air time in Florida through November, or as much as he can. Why? Because he knows the Club for Growth is going to do what they did to Specter -- fund an effort to have Crist donors ask for their money back. Well, because Crist has spent it all on television advertising holds that he may or may not later use, he can say he has none to give back. Classy, Charlie."
David Frum is dusting off Tony Kornheiser's old Redskins bandwagon and is painting "Rubio 2010" on the side: "Crist continues to lead the polls. I expect that lead to fade as Republicans rally to Rubio and independents question the grounds for Crist's candidacy. I hope that translates into a Rubio win, but I worry that a Rubio candidacy will be a tougher and harder fight than a Crist candidacy would have been: I don't share the view that the conservative voter belongs to Rubio's hard-edged style of politics, especially not in a state like Florida. But all that is past helping. The GOP nomination race has a presumptive winner and Republicans of all stripes have a new standard-bearer."
Yeah, Crist led some hypothetical three-way polls, but I suspect that his bold departure from the party, about a month and a half after he pretty explicitly promised he wouldn't do that, is going to drag down his approval across the board. "Florida Independents for Duplicitous Turncoats" just isn't a big enough demographic to get Charlie to 34 percent.
Oh, and Drew M. at Ace of Spades would like a word with Frum and other past fans of Crist: "Why exactly should the right be taking advice from someone who thought Crist was a great choice, really the only choice? The guy has turned out to be a sore loser snake who may well be trying to cut a deal with the Obama White House to win this race. Some of us saw that early on and wanted nothing to do with the guy. Exactly at what point [do] our 'leaders' have to answer for the fact that they are often wrong?"
On NRO today, I take a look at Crist's many avoidable mistakes since declaring his Senate bid.
2. Sooner or Later, Frankenstein Always Turns on His Creator
Politico details a predictable, if not justified, whine: "Obama and the media actually have a surprisingly hostile relationship -- as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the past decade, reporters who cover the White House say. Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message. But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors, and reporters feel it doesn't live up to that pledge in several key areas."
I get the feeling Hot Air's Allahpundit put a lot of relish into this one: "A reporter from the New Yorker quoted in the piece seems surprised to find them still practicing campaign-style message control, which is not unlike being surprised to find McDonald's serving fast food. Hasn't the 'perpetual campaign' been part of their strategy since the beginning, replete with maintaining their 2008 online presence (even if it has been underutilized) and conducting whirlwind national tours to push their platform (even if they are spectacularly unsuccessful)? Advertising is their core business, and advertisers are necessarily control freaks. Beyond that, though, The One frankly can afford to tell the press to piss off. He knows their political sympathies will never let them really turn on him, especially with the wicked Republican 'teabaggers' suddenly threatening Democratic power. And he knows that widespread contempt for the media will never allow the public to side with them against him -- due in part, ironically, to the fact that the media itself helped shape perceptions of this guy as being as guileless as a cross between Bambi and Jesus. I make a living off criticizing The One and even I can't help relishing the thought of him flipping off some of the same people who sold him as a type of avatar sent to deliver America from its political and racial sins. You wanted him? You got him. Be more careful next time."
The Anchoress offers a disturbing, but probably fitting analogy: "I've seen a few comments that the press might 'turn' on Obama. I doubt it. The press needs an intervention -- a few people to force them to confront this sick relationship. Lacking that, they will continue as they are. They're griping because their feelings are a little hurt, but the press knows that -- ideologically -- they are all on the same page with Obama; they understand that he will put into effect the policies they desire. So, they embody the sick delusion: 'My boyfriend smacks me around, but then he buys me this fur coat! We can work it out, I know we can!' All Obama has to do is crook his little finger and smile at them and they'll come running back, like a battered wife who apologizes for 'forcing' her husband to kick her and then hurries off to make him a steak dinner and Crepes Suzette. This Politico piece is just venting between girlfriends, over coffee."
Before he entered politics, Barack Obama had a challenged life. But since that first state Senate race, he's had a strong wind at his back that comes from a near-adoring attitude from the press, the primary conduit for communication between elected officials and those who vote for them. The result is a man so prickly and indignant about standard-issue political back-and-forth that Alan Keyes got under his skin and whose top strategist, David Axelrod, had to break it to him, gently, two years into his U.S. Senate career that he had not yet experienced any sustained criticism. The result is a man who has an exceedingly narrow sense of what constitutes "legitimate" criticism of him, and who is utterly convinced that those who disagree with him act in bad faith, have bad motives, or are ignorantly and bitterly clinging to outdated notions.
3. AP: Horrific Draconian Arizona Immigration Law Somehow Achieving Stated Goal
The headline from the Associated Press makes it sound as if the state legislature has offended their uninvited guests: "Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Ariz. law."
The story continues, "Many of the cars that once stopped in the Home Depot parking lot to pick up day laborers to hang drywall or do landscaping now just drive on by. Arizona's sweeping immigration bill allows police to arrest illegal immigrant day laborers seeking work on the street or anyone trying to hire them. It won't take effect until summer but it is already having an effect on the state's underground economy. 'Nobody wants to pick us up,' Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store. Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants."
I feel like I'm reading a standard-issue feature-y lead, full of emotion and poignancy, gone horribly awry.
This is the point of the legislation. The illegal immigrants' sudden desire to leave and go elsewhere is not a tragic side effect of the legislation; it is the point of the legislation. Even before taking effect, the law is doing what it is supposed to do. I feel like I'm Herm Edwards explaining why you play the game.
Dan Riehl asks, "Is there a punch line in here I'm missing?"
Da Tech Guy: "If I'm a conservative I would trumpet this headline in every state and every county and every newspaper, I would call up every congressman and woman and ask for comment on this result. I would bring up this law in every state legislature and let the Democrats try to oppose it."
4. Addenda
Thanks to this blog for the kind words: "Every morning (well, Monday through Friday) I get an email known as the Morning Jolt. It's written by Jim Geraghty, who writes the Campaign Spot blog for National Review Online. I will freely admit that it's the email I most look forward to receiving each morning (I'm more than a little resentful that Geraghty doesn't suck it up and shoot one of these out on Saturdays and Sundays--and he TOOK TIME OFF when his wife had a baby, which also sent me into withdrawal). I've recommended signing up for it before. I'm doing it again. Follow this link and you can sign up for all of National Review's newsletters. I get all of them; if you are only going to get one, make it Morning Jolt. Geraghty is an expert on election issues, political races, policies, and so on. He's funny and entertaining. His newsletter reads more like an email from a like-minded friend than a political column that you read because you know it's good for you." |
