Holy Wow

Florida governor and Republican Senate candidate may officially be the tallest and least popular Oompa Loompa in the history of time. Only months ago a rising star in the Republican party, he now trails Marco Rubio by a truly staggering 30 points in the GOP Senate primary. Adding insult to career injury, most Floridians don’t want to see him back in the governor’s office next year, either. Even if he ran as an independent, it doesn’t appear that Crist could get elected so much as dog catcher in 2010.
By way of illustration, this graph, courtesy of TPM, says it all. The black line, the one falling to earth like a wounded bird, struggling to stay aloft, flailing at the air, not yet quite comprehending that it’s already dead? That’s Crist.

 

Not Such A Bad Day At Black Rock

Yesterday was not a good day for the left, but it wasn’t the sort of tanking the media is seemingly choosing to see it as. Democrats lost one very close gubernatorial election and lost another one that was pretty much a toss up in the first place. There’s no reasonable way to portray this as good news, but it’s far from the ‘humiliating’ loss it’s being portrayed as at the moment. These are fundamentally local elections, and while Republicans got a  couple of governors in, the largely Republican backed spending limit measures on the ballot in Maine and Washington went down hard. (For those of you playing along at home, that means Tim Eyman is weeping somewhere, so it can’t be that bad of a day.) 

At a national level, it’s even harder to accept this as a referendum on 10 months of the Obama administration. Dems easily defended a seat in California and, perhaps more tellingly picked up a House seat in New York that’s been held by Republicans for nearly 100 years. That last one is thanks mostly to prominent GOP members boosting an ultra-conservative who promised to take his marching orders from an acknowledged sociopath fundamentally turned off a lot of voters in a traditionally moderate Republican district. The loss of Dave Hoffman in New York and the way Tim Pawlenty is sprinting to the right in preparation for a 2012 presidential run suggests that centrists in the GOP are in trouble –  Charlie Crist, I’m looking at you. And if this keeps up, it’s Republicans, more than Democrats who run the distinct risk of finding themselves largely out of touch with a lot of American independents come mid-term elections next year.

 

Like A Prayer

Landfall in Florida? Not if Charlie Crist and his good buddy God have anything to say about it.

We find ourselves at a crossroads in American politics today, where we have to choose between two kinds of politicians. One sort, epitomized by Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, waits patiently in quiet deference for God to start holding up cue cards and then acts according to His divine will.

Which is all well and good, I suppose. But wouldn’t you rather vote for a dynamic, aggressive politico who brooks no sass from anyone, up to and including the Lord Almighty? That’s the sort of elected official Charlie Crist is. Need proof? How about this – when Charlie Crist tells God to keep them hurricanes out of Florida, then those motherfuckin’ hurricanes stay the hell out of Florida.

The only question now is, who do you want running your country –  a fundamentalist Christian who can’t take a shit without the say so from the Man Upstairs, or a fundamentalist Christian who single handedly defends his entire state from the ravages of tropical storms by telling God how the fuck it is going to be?