Marco Rubio is the Anti-Crist

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been waiting to use that title for some time, and why not now, what with a new poll showing Independent (Republican) Charlie Crist leading Republican Marco Rubio by 11 points, 42 to 31, a relatively wide margin, with Democrat Kendrick Meek well back at 14. Other polls have shown a much closer race. Rasmussen had the race tied just a couple of weeks ago, while Crist's lead has been in single digits.

It's odd to root for Crist, but it's really a two-man race, with Meek an also-ran, and, within the GOP, Crist is very much the anti-Rubio, just as Rubio is the anti-Crist. The fact that Rubio surged ahead of Crist and didn't look back, and that Crist, with effectively no shot of winning the Republican nomination, decided to challenge his own party as an independent, shows just what has happened to the Republican Party. Rubio, after all, is just the sort of extremist the party likes, the proponent of an extremism that is new mainstream of the GOP, a mainstream that is really just a narrow ideological sliver on the right. For more on that, see:

-- Meet Marco Rubio, the new Doug Hoffman, right-wing poster boy (by MJWS);

-- Madness in the Insanitarium: Romney, Rubio, and CPAC (by MJWS);

-- Quote of the Day: Marco Rubio on Israel and Iran (by MJWS); and

-- Switcherubio (by Mustang Bobby).

And so Crist it must be, a Republican who doesn't seem to be insane, a Republican who seems to be open to working with Obama and the Democrats, a Republican with the courage, however much motivated by political self-interest, to say enough is enough to a party that no longer had any use for him, a party that effectively had rejected him. Here's hoping the polls continue to show him with a decisive lead.