Inside Florida's Red-Meat Republican Primary

By Joe Klein Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

On a recent Saturday night in Daytona Beach — with a thousand or so bikers exercising their unalienable right to be extremely noisy in the streets — Marco Rubio, the new ultraconservative poster boy running for the U.S. Senate in Florida, offered the Volusia County Republican Party a carefully calibrated, and rather compelling, celebration of freedom.

He spoke about his Cuban heritage. His parents had escaped Castro. "It is possible to lose your freedom. You can have your family business taken over by 'the people.' You can lose your country. My parents did," he said, while carefully adding that he wasn't saying that would happen here.

The assembled Republicans seemed to ignore the caveat: they were the sort of people who are convinced that we are well down the road toward losing our country. Their local leaders had gone to Washington for the Sept. 12 tea-party march. The winner of the Republican of the Year award announced his daily fidelity to Glenn Beck's talk show. They described themselves, more than once, as "fighters for freedom."

The man who introduced Rubio said the Democrats were intent on confiscating wealth in order to buy votes: "Our American principles are under attack in a way they never were before." Rubio refrained from feeding the crowd red meat — his was medium rare — but he did present a vision of the country at a crossroads of freedom and European-style socialism. "If we become like every other country, we will no longer be exceptional," he said. "And our children will ask us, Why did you let that happen?"


The Republican Senate primary in Florida, between Rubio and Governor Charlie Crist, will receive a great deal of national attention in the coming months.

At a time when, according to a recent poll, only 20% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, this race may be the purest test of where the party is headed, a choice between pragmatism and ideology. Both candidates are excellent. Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida house, is young, handsome, enthusiastic and articulate in an unpackaged, spontaneous way.

Crist has been, by almost every account, a popular and successful governor. He is more the traditional politician, smoother than glass. "I smile a lot," the governor told me, sitting on the patio of his official Tallahassee mansion. "I'm a happy warrior."

By any reasonable standard, Crist would be considered a conservative.

He is pro-life, pro-gun, antitax, big on law and order, a foreign policy hawk. But these are not reasonable times. In February, Crist not only came out in favor of Barack Obama's stimulus package; he welcomed the stimulator himself to Florida.

(he also loves open borders and amnesty)

There is a picture, which Floridians will see more than once before the primary, of the governor and the President arm in arm. Crist's aides can list the various things the stimulus funds have done for Florida — saved the jobs of 26,000 teachers, for starters.

They will also tell you that Florida is a net "donor" state: it sends more money to the Federal Government than it receives. "Why shouldn't we get our fair share?" the governor asks. And as for his Obama hug, "He is the President of the United States. You honor the office."
(Read "GOP Governors: Split over Obama's Stimulus Plan.")

Then again, according to other polls, about a third of Republicans nationally don't think Obama was born in the U.S. A disproportionate number of them are the people who go to rallies and vote in primaries.

The activists will probably be the heart of Rubio's campaign — although the candidate told me he doesn't consider the President's birth certificate an issue. "There are much bigger problems to worry about," Rubio said. "There is the massive growth of government."

The "massive" growth of government is a terrific issue in the abstract.

It becomes more problematic when you get down to details: Would Rubio actually have turned down the stimulus funds that he criticizes Crist for accepting? In Florida, with its elderly population (receiving government pensions and government health care) and its exotic climate, Rubio's form of libertarianism is a fantasy.

Indeed, after the wild hurricane season of 2005, Governor Jeb Bush was forced to offer homeowners a public-insurance option — private-insurance rates were skyrocketing — which quickly became the state's largest insurer.

"Lord, save me from the purists," says Jim Greer, the state's Republican Party chairman and a Crist supporter. "If the party keeps going in this direction, all we'll have left will be three people sitting around a table. They'll be absolutely pure, but none of them will be holding office."

Crist says he has faced conservative challengers in Republican primaries before and won each time. This time, I suspect, his fate is tied to Obama's success: if the economy is looking better when the primary rolls around next August, Republicans may not be as riled up as they are now. "I'm not seeking the angry vote," the governor told me with a smile. "I'm seeking the optimists."

http://www.time.com/time/politics/artic ... 90,00.html