From the Palm Beach Post this encouraging report on the Centrist tendencies of new Governor Charlie Crist.
Not yet known, though, is whether these successes and even Crist’s stellar approval ratings can let him manage what could be his boldest but, so far, his least-publicized challenge: to remake the state Republican Party in his own, more centrist image.
“Clearly a more tolerant party that believes in good law and order, sound financial discipline but … a true compassion for people and our environment, particularly in a state like Florida, it is the wave of the future,” said Crist, who prefers to call himself a “problem-solver” rather than accept a label like “moderate.”
Yet on issue after issue – from cracking down on insurance companies to supporting implementation of the class-size amendment to pushing to scrap touch-screen voting machines – Crist has broken with conservative Republican orthodoxy of the past decade. Crist said he is merely trying to get his party back to the principles of founders such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The strategy seems to be working so far. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Crist with a 69 percent approval rating, with only 6 percent disapproving.
“Charlie is hitting Republican politics at exactly the right time to moderate the Republican Party in the state,” said former state GOP Chairman Tom Slade, who cites the unpopularity of President Bush and the results of the 2006 congressional elections as proof that Crist is on the right track. “We have scared voters off with some of the hard-right stuff.”
“Charlie Crist is doing exactly the right thing,” said former GOP New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who has taken the same message nationally with a book titled It’s My Party Too and a political action committee named for it.
She said recent polls show that 60 percent of Americans call themselves political centrists.
“That’s where we need to run,” she said. “We’re sick to death of this hard-edged, narrow-minded image. … We’ve had this attitude over the last few years that if you’re not with me, you’re against me.”
“…It may have the unintended additional effect of expanding the base of the party I happen to belong to,” Crist said. “I think it may open the eyes of some who may have thought that Republicans necessarily stood against the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, or stood against having a paper trail in our voting system, or stood against fighting for the betterment of our environment. But here we have a Republican governor who’s fighting for all of those things, and higher teacher pay, and so maybe it gets a second look as a result.”
It seems to me that Republican and Democratic Governors and Mayors are moving towards the Center, in an effort to reposition themselves as problem solvers rather than champions of extreme ideology, and thus appeal to more voters. I hope that they use their political capital to nurture the vitality of the Center by encouraging redistricting reform and public finance of campaigns like exist in seven states and two municipalities and bills are currently being considered in state capitols across the country.
This compares to what I feel is the relatively self destructive GOP point of view of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who regularly calls for the abolishment of the presidential public financing system that was established after the Watergate scandals.
Public Campagin Action Funds responds:
“Senator McConnell apparently prefers to see presidential candidates race around the country scooping up checks from wealthy Americans rather than have the presidential campaign be a contest of ideas,” said David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “McConnell wants us all to wear blinders to the fact that our nation is about to see its first billion dollar presidential campaign.”
“It is unbelievable that three months after voters gave Congress a mandate to clean up corruption Senator McConnell is opposing doing away spending limits and public financing. The presidential system is weak, but it ought to be modernized, not thrown out,” commented Donnelly.
Public support for public financing is consistently strong. In a bipartisan survey done last summer, seventy-four percent supported publicly financed elections along with strict spending limits and tough enforcement.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.