By Chris Ingram
The jabs keep coming at embattled Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer. Yesterday, over a half-dozen major donors to the party and GOP candidates signed-off on a letter calling for Greer to go. We’re not talking $1,000 contributors here folks. These are big time bundlers who raise hundreds of thousands each. Most of them are very close to the Tan Man.
What remains to be seen is:
1) Does Charlie Crist have any political sense about him, or has he fried his brain with one too many trips to the tanning bed? Over his career Charlie has shown great political smarts, but looking at his performance in 2009 makes you think he’s got the political instincts of Rod Blagojevich.
2) Does Jim Greer have enough sense to realize his future is bleak, but will certainly be over if he remains defiant in office? No one expects Greer to find a lot of logic, reason, and sense over night. What Greer has done so far is what happens when your ego is five times greater than your level of competence.
3) Do the party establishment and the grassroots have enough power of persuasion to get Charlie’s or Bill McCollum’s attention? Greer has endured a punch just about every other day for the last ten days, but none have been a knock-out blow and Chuckles the Clown keeps saying he has full faith in his chairman. That Charlie apparently believes his own press releases is an indication of his own weaknesses and shows why he’s now tied in the polls with Marco Rubio.
4) Do the state House and Senate leaders even care about what happens? No. These guys have absolutely no understanding of leadership. Neither does Attorney General Bill McCollum for that matter — as he’s shown by sitting on the sidelines for months.
5) Does the state executive committee have the legal authority to force Greer out at the meeting in Orlando next month? Anti-Greer forces say yes. Greer and his cronies at the RPOF say no. Who has the best legal talent will answer this question (if it gets that far).
Stay tuned…
Chris Ingram is the president and founder of 411 Communications a corporate and political communications firm, and publisher of www.IrreverentView.com. Ingram is a frequent pundit on Fox News and CNN, and has written opinion columns for the Washington Times, UPI, Front Page Florida, and National Review online. E-mail him at: Chris@411Communications.com.
This article appears in Dec 30, 2009 – Jan 5, 2010.