Marco Rubio creates an opening for Kendrick Meek
One of these people should thank Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio’s troubles — his penchant for spending donor money to pad his lifestyle and PAC money to hire his family members as “couriers” — plus his unwillingness to man up and address the issue publicly, have done what most people, myself included, thought was next to impossible just a few short months ago. He has made it possible for the Democrats to pick up Mel Martinez’s old Senate seat, despite the fact that their front-runner, Kendrick Meek, barely registers in terms of statewide name ID. That’s the conclusion Markos Moulitsas has come to, based on the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, which finds that while 57 percent of respondents (and 47 percent of Democrats) in the poll had no idea who Meek is (he’s a Miami Congressman, btw…) the Congressman (the Washington guy, no less…) has the lowest unfavorable ratings (18%) of the three major candidates, including Rubio (36%) and Gov. Charlie Crist (45%), while Crist loses the primary to Rubio in the Kos poll by 28 points. That matches the findings in two push-button polls (which aren’t the most reliable things…) and while the Kos poll is a wee bit hinky (only 600 respondents, 5 percent MOE in the primary samples…) the trend lines in it can’t be missed, and they are these: Read more
Morning clicks: run away Rubio, Kos flips on Crist-Meek
It’s a late morning here in ReidReport land. I’m getting ready to head out to Channel 2 to tape a segment of “issues,” but before I go, here’s a bit of what’s going on in the sunshine state:
Rubio on the Run: this Daniel Ruth op-ed on Marco Rubio’s duck and hide response to his credit card and family employment plan with other people’s money is worth it just for all the different ways he messes with Rubio’s political title. On the substance, the bottom line is that Marco is taking a page from the Sarah Palin playbook: when scandal calls, don’t answer the door; hide under the bed and stock the foyer with pre-screened, adoring fans.
Meanwhile, if the problem is politicians treating donor money like their personal slush fund, why is the answer to bring back even more political slush funds?
Here’s something you don’t see every day: the Meek campaign forwarding around a post from the Daily Kos. Read more
Morning clicks: orange is the new bank, Stupak vs the nuns, Charlie advises Kendrick
If it’s Thursday, it must be time for an orange alert! John “moneybags” Boehner had some sage advice for his banker friends when he spoke before an enthusiastic crowd at an American Bankers Association “government relations” (that’s lobbying to you) summit: “don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves.” Yeah, bankers, fight the power! Boehner plans to try and stall Wall Street reform in the House for at least a year.
Well that went well … President Obama finally appeared on one of Fox’s “news” programs … and a hockey game broke out.
Meanwhile, back in the sunshine state, Charlie Crist has some advice for Kendrick Meek that he’s offering purely for effect since he knows Meek won’t take it, and really what’s the point? He’s urging the Miami Democrat to vote against the healthcare bill (as if). He even wrote Kendrick a letter about it! Well, at least it makes Charlie sound more “Republican,” meaning devoid of policy solutions but loyal to the “party of no” strategy, which should please, well … no one who hates Charlie Crist. Good work!
The vote in question will probably happen Sunday, after the 72 hour waiting period Speaker Pelosi has called for following release of the bill’s CBO score. Read more
Kitty discovers the truth about Medicare Part D
Have you noticed how many of Charlie Crist’s friends are suddenly all over TV? Who are the equivalent for Marco Rubio, besides Jim DeMint and the tea party people…? Anyhoo, Florida Temp Senator George LeMieux was just on “Hardball,” and Chuck Todd, sitting in for Chris, stumped him by informing LeMieux, perhaps for the first time, that Medicare Advantage is not Medicare. It’s a private insurance product that gets taxpayer subsidies, so if you cut the subsidies, you’re not cutting Medicare, you’re just giving less money to insurance companies. Cue the “ums…” LeMieux wouldn’t say straight out that Marco Rubio is qualified for the Senate, and he stood by his friend Charlie Crist. Not much other news there, but someone ought to forward Kitty a description of Part D … Best line of the segment: Chris Cillizza: nobody knows Charlie Crist like George LeMieux. He also made the observation that Crist may be struggling without his chief strategist, who is the equivalent of the governor’s Karl Rove. Interesting point …
Charlie Crist’s salty Fox News interview
Maybe the stress of the campaign, and the polls are getting to Charlie Crist. But his interview this morning on Fox was kind of salty. Crist had some audio problems at the top of the interview, and then snapped at the (insert generic blonde Fox News Host here) for interrupting him. For her part, the Fox-y lady kept pressing Crist to explain just how he’d fallen so far behind Marco Rubio, and why he so foolishly accepted that stimulus money that every other governor accepted too, except without the hugging. Well Crist was in no mood for that. He cut her off a couple of times but eventually responded that people haven’t begun to look at Rubio’s record, which apparently is full of nasty tax hikes. Crist ended the interview on an up-note, telling the Fox-y lady how much fun it was to “play with their cameras.”
And just in case Camp Crist doubted that Fox is unfriendly territory, the network has forced Youtube to yank a DNC ad that mocked Marco Rubio for the “back wax” (or whatever he got for $134 at a chichy Miami salon with donor money. But as Media Matters points out, Fox doesn’t always mind political parties using its video: Read more
Florida 2010: Connie Mack pinch hits for Crist
Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy III, better known as Connie Mack, the respected Republican who used to occupy the seat now held by Bill Nelson (trivia point: his son is a U.S. Congressman and is married to Sonny Bono’s widow… just thought you should know that …) isn’t pulling a John Cornyn by backing away from his endorsement last year of Charlie Crist. Mack has ok’d a fundraising letter on behalf of the Florida governor. It’s bottom line: “if Charlie’s not a conservative, I don’t know who is.” The letter focuses on Crist “never having signed a new tax” and what Mack deems his pro-life and pro-Second Amendment stands, and even pushes the old “chain gang Charlie” moniker to try and reframe the governor as a reliable conservative, who by the way “opposes ObamaCare,” just like Mack! The Crist campaign issued the letter about an hour ago. (Read it here.) Read more
Poll: Crist’s loss is Meek’s gain
A couple of new, if problematic polls, find good news in the decline of Charlie Crist … for Kendrick Meek. Read more
The Rubiolution will be televised
March sure is early to be going on television for a primary in August … which tells me Team Rubio is at least somewhat concerned that AMEXgate and the $134 back wax might begin to stick. Here’s their attempt to interrupt the narrative, with a gauzy biographical ad that contains a curious message at a time when voters want Washington to work together, rather than fight like fish wives: “we need Republicans in Washington who will stand up to Barack Obama, not join him…” as if Obama is the king of the pod people. The message is aimed squarely at the Obama deranged GOP primary voters Rubio is already wildly popular with (note the paean to “defeating radical islam,”) and hits most of the requisite winger notes. Really, all that’s missing is a guest shot of Tom Tancredo and some drivel about a border fence. Watch:
Team Crist’s response after the jump. Read more
Rubio fires back on the back wax, takes in-coming on ‘turkeys’
The Rubio-Crist groom-off continues, with Team Rubio finally answering the burning question: what can a man get for $133.75 at chichy Churcill’s Barbershop in Miami? Rubio insists that in his case, it was not a back waxing:
“Marco paid $20 for a haircut with a razor on the neck, and he bought some items that went into a silent auction, including gift certificates,”Alex Burgos, a spokesman for Rubio said in a statement to Live Shots.” Charlie Crist’s obsession with making up things about other people’s grooming habits is bizarre for anyone, especially the sitting governor of Florida. It’s also a shame he cares more about what’s in Marco’s personal bills than what’s in the stimulus bill he supported.”
Take that, tan man! Read more
Six degrees of Charlie Crist: Marco’s beauty wax?
Haven’t had a lot of time for blogging today … but did you catch that Charlie Crist interview on Greta yesterday? We happened to catch most of it at my house last night while flipping channels during commercials (a lucky break, since we literally never watch Fox Noise… btw SNL has it right … Greta’s face literally doesn’t move …) Suffice it to say, Charles was on a tear. He questioned whether Marco Rubio’s $130 Miami haircut was actually a “back waxing” (not that he’d know anything about that…) and then wondered, in an “aw shucks, but feel free to jump all over this like it was ACORN” kind of way) how Rubio managed to pay back $16,000 in Amex bills with a net worth of just $8,000. “Where is he getting that money? I don’t know…” Good question! Best clip:
VAN SUSTEREN: Wait a second, stop. A back wax? Wait a second.
CRIST: I don’t know what it was, you know?
VAN SUSTEREN: I know, but was there a suggestion it was for a back wax or are you being flip?
CRIST: I don’t know what it was. Initially we were told it was a haircut. And then he said it wasn’t a haircut. Then he had the gall to go on Neil Cavuto’s show and said it was his money. It was a credit card from the Republican Party. It was party donors’ money.
The detachment from reality is stunning to me. And to try to say that you’re a fiscal conservative, yet you spend $130 for maybe a haircut and maybe other things, I don’t know what you do at a salon when you are a guy.
Hang on a hot buttered second … was Charlie trying to imply that Marco is gay or metrosexual or what? Jesus, take the wheel! Read more
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