Now that he has two powerful organizations – the Democratic and Republican parties – loading up all of their resources against him, when Charlie Crist contradicts himself on a position (nothing unique throughout his last year as Governor), there is more scrutiny than ever to call attention to such flip-flops, as the Florida U.S. Senate race gets into focus on the national stage.
Crist appeared Sunday morning on CNN’s State of the Union with guest host Ed Henry, who challenged him on his support for the federal health care reform bill that he said in this brief exchange on Friday:
HENRY: OK, I want to turn quickly to another important issue to Florida voters who are looking at voters all around the country, health care. You just told a Florida TV station that you would have voted for the president’s health plan, then you said misspoke, but your Democratic opponent Kendrick Meek put out a press release saying, breaking, the diagnosis is that Governor Crist has a pre-existing condition, political amnesia. Because after all, you previously said you would push to repeal the president’s plan. So which one is it? Do you support the president’s health plan, or would you repeal it?
CRIST: There are parts of it I do support and there are parts of it that I take issue with. That’s the beauty of being an independent candidate. Had I been there, I would have voted against it. Do I get elected, I’d like the opportunity to help fix it. Now only an independent could look at this one bill and find parts of it that are good and parts of it that are bad. In many weeks, I feel almost like an umpire calling balls and strikes.
HENRY: The bottom line though on health care is that you have flipped on the repeal question. You once said that you would repeal the president’s health plan. You are now saying, “I don’t like all of it,” but you would keep it, you would try to amend it if you were elected to the Senate, isn’t that right? You backed off of saying you would repeal the plan?
CRIST: Well whatever word you want to use, what we need to do is fix it and we need to go forward. This is about doing what’s right for the people. This election is about the future.
The Rubio camp has also been hammering Crist’s equivocations on whether or not he’ll return campaign contributions from Republicans who request them since he left their party last April. Charlie seemed to say two different things to Henry when asked about this on Saturday (in an interview that was not shown on State of the Union).
Crist told Henry, “we’ll give it [campaign contributions] back to people who had asked for it.”
The independent candidate seemed to hedge a moment later saying, “People gave money to a good cause, I’m going to spend it on a good cause and that’s how I feel about it.”
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2010.
