Forgiving Crist? That Will Take Work

I have made no secret in the last election cycle about my feelings on Charlie Crist, and believe far too many Democrats were placing disproportionately little blame on his spoiler candidacy putting a Senate seat out of reach for the blue team. Certainly, though, there are more devious figures in Florida politics. The most high-profile is Gov. Rick 'Voldemort' Scott, a man whose private sector experience should have earned him a term in prison, not the governor's mansion. Now, a new poll on the governor's race is making a lot of us do a gut check. The short of it: Crist beats Scott 48-34, if Crist runs as a Democrat. I begin to ask myself, can Florida suffer through another four years with Rick Scott as governor? Scott is extraordinarily unpopular today, but we would all be fools to presume that will be the case in November 2014. Just as I believe Mitt Romney is a fool banking on the economy to crash in order to make Barack Obama vulnerable, I think Democrats have to avoid embracing a similar narrative with Scott. Jobs will certainly come to Florida in coming years, and if anything, Scott's give corporations whatever deregulation they ask for will lead to short-term bumps in the economy, albeit at the expense of our collective fractured soul. But what of Crist? A man famous for his political instincts did serious damage in 2010, not just to his own reputation but in allowing the creation of a narrative that favored a tea party takeover of government in Washington and in Tallahassee. Crist said the Republican Party left him, but his ego made him believe he could stand alone against a two-party system, and he refused the embrace of Democrats, who would have accepted him with welcome arms and shown that the party was a bastion for disenchanted moderates being forcefully kicked out of the GOP's big tent. Will the party do so today? Probably, but no doubt they will feel like the pathetic second choice of a governor jilted by his former base. The poll actually shows Crist does better among Florida Democrats than he fares with independents, much less Republicans. And unlike the Senate race two years ago, and despite sucking the life out of Kendrick Meek's Senate ambitions, Crist wins support from 88 percent of black voters. For now, I will reserve judgment. That is hard for me to do, but I will do my hardy best. The Democratic bench is weak in Florida, but everyone on it deserves consideration. In my opinion, Alex Sink, despite wide derision, ran a pretty solid campaign for a Florida Democrat and barely got swallowed by a Republican wave. Pam Iorio made a string name for herself as a successful mayor of Tampa. Former lawmakers like Rod Smith, Karen Thurman and Jeremy Ring all have sound party credentials and histories of public service. We would do our own ranks a severe disservice by dismissing their candidacies based solely on Crist's celebrity status. But if Crist made the switch to Democrat now, if he spent the next two years fighting for Barack Obama to win Florida, for Democrats to take more seats in the state Legislature, to rebuild a party which has been in tatters for a decade and a half, then Democrats should consider forgiving Crist of his past sins. But he shouldn't get a pass to the big race. He needs to prove he cares more about a set of public principles than his own ambitions. The good news is there is still time to do it, and this poll is probably the first of several offering some incentive. Charlie Crist can be the Democratic nominee, but first he needs to become and publicly commit to being a Democrat.

At Least Obama Won The Popular Vote

I can't decide if I should be angry or start laughing hysterically about Marco Rubio's suggestion that Barack Obama is the most "Divisive Figure In Modern American History." Here is the full quote via MSNBC: --- "The man who today occupies the White House and is running for president is a very different person," Rubio said at a high-profile GOP fundraiser, where he claimed Obama has abandoned the ideals he ran on in 2008. "We have not seen such a divisive figure in modern American history than we have over the last three and one-half years." --- Rubio, of course, is referring to the only president to come into office with a majority of the popular vote. Of course, to be fair, his remarks does not want to measure Obama's "divisive" quotient based on anything that has happened since the last time all of America weighed in on his job performance. He just wants to say this about a president who, at the moment, seems to be coasting to re-election. Why would I boldly state that? Not so much because of Obama, but because of how much Mitt Romney has completely divided the Republican Party. But never mind that irony. Let's instead look at whether any more figures in modern history have divided America so much as Obama. Let's start with the last president, George W. Bush. That was easy. Oh, do I need to justify that? I would note, then, that the very first vote Marco Rubio ever cast as a member of the Florida Legislature was to cast aside the popular vote in Florida because of the recounts and instead have the Legislature simply award those votes to George W. Bush. The Supreme Court eventually took matters into their own hands in what may call a divisive decision. Then, Bush led a country frightened by 9/11 into an unwarranted war with Iraq. When George W. Bush was heading into re-election, the nation was so divided and the election so close that we didn't have the election settled until the morning after the vote (granted by Bush standards that was pretty rapid). I hope it is some time before the nation becomes as divided as it was during the reign of W. It certainly isn't so divided today, and doubt it will become so any time soon. Then, Obama is also much less divisive than the last Democrat we had in office, Bill Clinton. Now ridiculous justifications aside, Clinton was impeached. He led a nation that couldn't bear the thought of the White House and Congress being run by the same party. And the last president before that? The nation turned on George H.W. Bush to the point they voted him out of office. But if we start modern history two years ago, when Marco Rubio became the poster child for a political party eating itself, and when Marco Rubio won a Senate seat without winning the popular vote in Florida... Oh wait. There were decisive political figures that year too.

Something the SYG apologists should consider

Predictably, a bunch of people who reflexively want to take the side of the shooter in a Stand Your Ground case are these days saying "George Zimmerman's side" of the Trayvon Martin's shooting is revealing more information.

I have said before, and reiterate again, Zimmerman's side of the story is essentially the same as it ever was and the fundamental facts of the case have not moved an inch. The story boils down to this: Zimmerman thought Trayvon looked suspicious and called police. He then tracked Martin down. Zimmerman claims the two got into an altercation and he felt he needed to use deadly force and kill Martin.

That was the Zimmerman side on day 1. Now, Daily Caller is looking at video which most people see as evidence there wasn't much of a scuffle and sees evidence that there was a fight. A growing number of people seem to think hearing Zimmerman claimed his nose was broken adds some new information to the basic facts.

But as people jump on this wagon, they need to consider something very clearly. SYG works both ways. If people say Martin needed to die for this, realize he had every right to kill George Zimmerman based on the very same law which Zimmerman is shielding himself with now.

Zimmerman stalked Martin in the streets and was brandishing a deadly weapon when he did it. Martin, by Zimmerman's own account, confronted Zimmerman from there. Was it not reasonable with a man stalking you in the streets with a handgun for you to feel threatened for your life? Indeed, even assuming everything Zimmerman is saying is the absolute truth, all Martin did was to stand his ground.

Now ask yourself, would police have responded do defensively to the defendant if that was the case? If a 17-year-old black kid in a hoodie had wrestled a gun away from the neighborhood watch guy and shot him in the streets near his home? According to SYG, that is exactly what should have happened.

Zimmerman created the confrontation. Zimmerman introduced the threat of deadly force. Zimmerman employed deadly force and killed a child, hoodie or no hoodie. And Zimmerman still has not been charged with a crime.

None of that changes with a broken nose or a laceration on the head. Zimmerman has yet to show he felt in danger of his life when he had a handgun and Martin had some iced tea. Martin, on the other hand, would be able to make a pretty good cade he had reason to fear for his life. We know that because he is dead.

Standing Down

It feels foolish at this point that I haven't commented yet on the Trayvon Martin incident, seeing as even the president of the United States has weighed in. But in so many ways, I hate when hype takes over such a serious story as this. I think politics should look at systemic problems and solutions, and the failure to arrest the killer of this child is primarilly a matter of poor execution.

There is, though, a systemic issue that deserves fresh attention right now, and one I know quite a bit about. The Stand Your Ground law is one that was controversial from the start, and the attention on the issue in the past few weeks has been woefully confused about the matter. I actually covered one of the first incidents of how Stand Your Ground played out while working for the News-Press. There is no live link anymore, but my articles have been cited in some legal journals since then.

The short version is that a man named Michael Frazzini dressed himself up in dark clothes and hid in his mother's backyard one night to catch a neighbor vandalizing the place. What happened was that neighbor's father, Todd Rasmussen, came out and saw Frazzini getting into a kerfuffle with his son and shot Frazzini in the backyard where Frazzini had grown up. No charges were ever brought forward, and though an assistant state attorney had recommended the matter go to grand jury, it never did.

Race was not a factor, so the story did not draw no much national attention, but the results were very similar in the Martin and Frazzini cases. A man with no reasonable capability to employ deadly force was shot dead in a location where he had every right to be. The Martin case is worse in some respects in that it happened in broad daylight and Martin wasn't wearing anything to cover his face (Frazzini wore a mask), but the justification for letting a killer off without even taking the matter to the courts was the same: the Stand Your Ground law.

In what is really a very good post at RedState, Dan McLaughlin gets something right about the way the law works. It is part of the self-defense statute, not a be-all end-all, so there is no guarantee that George Zimmerman or Todd Rasmussen would have been arrested if not for the existence of this law. McLaughlin correctly writes: "There’s been some discussion about Florida’s particularly strong self-defense law, but in any state in the Union, if a jury believes there is a real possibility that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, he’d be acquitted, and if the jury doesn’t, he’d be convicted."

But those who are guarding this law and saying it was misapplied here miss a greater point. This statute send a message to the public that they can and should use deadly force when they feel threatened.

Now, the law says you can use deadly force if you feel in imminent danger of losing your life or of someone else losing their life. Many of us, myself included, find it extremely doubtful such a thing happened when Zimmerman decided to shoot and kill a 17-year-old in the streets of Sanford. But there is something else at play here which liberals should remain very mindful of, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

With the Stand Your Ground law in place, that becomes a harder threshold to cross. Not impossible, mind you. Indeed, I think it could be done with some ease in the case of Zimmerman, and honestly believe prosecutors should have given it a go with Rasmussen six years ago. But a standard self-defense statute would be easier to deal with. And that gets to the real fatal flaw with Stand Your Ground. Legal laziness.

It is laziness on the part of cops, and laziness of the part of prosecutors (And if I may weigh in with one rather muted criticism in Sanford, why has all the attention been on the police? The State Attorney's Office can bring charges independently, but it is taking intervention by the state and the feds to get something done here. Prosecutors deserve at least as much criticism as the chief of police)

Stand Your Ground has never really seen the day it had to stand up to judicial scrutiny because it is used an excuse to avoid court altogether. In its execution, the law has not been used so often as a defense but as a reason not arrest anyone in the first case. That happened when sheriff's deputies let Todd Rasmussen sleep in his bed the night he killed a man, and it happened when George Zimmerman got trigger-happy in the streets of Sanford.

Were these men justified in what they did in the eyes of the courts? The courts were denied the chance to weigh in at all. In both of these cases, the enforcers of the law chose not to pursue charges, so no judge or jury ever decided if the Stand Your Ground law was a suitable defense.

That is why Stand Your Ground needs to be repealed. We have a law on the books that encouraged people to shoot first when they get twitchy, and the cost of that message has been paid in souls. A drunk driver who killed Trayvon Martin would be in jail right now. But while the whole world, it now seems, feels Zimmerman belongs in jail for what he did, cops at the time, and prosecutors since then, decided it was too difficult to justify an arrest and let him go free.

Yes, something is very wrong here, but that is not the message that was sent when this misguided law was passed.

West Can't Stand Obama Success

This should be no real surprise, of course, but I can't get over the hilarious response Rep. Allen West, R-Regretland, provided at the news markets were going up.

Via Think Progress, which took a snippet from Fox News:
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On Fox News this afternoon, West said the markets were only up because traders think Republicans will win big in November. Host Neil Cavuto seemed taken aback by the suggestion and pressed West for clarification, but the Congressman stood by his claim:

CAVUTO: What do you think about that? That the markets say you’re wrong, that the pick up is alive and well.
WEST: Well, I would think maybe the markets are maybe looking five to six months down the road, when we have a change in leadership in this country –
CAVUTO: Wait a minute, you think that this is built on a Republican either capturing the White House or Republicans capturing the Senate? … That might or might not be a stretch, but it is out there as a factor. You think that’s a genuine factor? You think that the markets are getting bubbly in anticipation of a Republican taking the White House?
WEST: Oh, absolutely. Well, I think that there is a hope that may be out there, is that we can get a person that has practical viable solutions for job creation here in the Unite States of America [in the presidency].
---

I'm going with "might be a stretch" here Neil.

Leave aside for a second that five or six months from now, Barack Obama will still be president because it will be August or September and the election will be a few months away. Let's get to the spirit of what West is ultimately suggesting: the market is ecstatic because Barack Obama will be gone soon.

Of course, every president must quake in fear at news of better than expected job gains and low interest rates. But let's look at polls for the president right now.

Reuters notes that Obama's approval rating is back above 50 percent, an important threshold to all incumbents. Business Week, a publication rather trusted by market investors, says Obama is still leading in the polls. Gas prices aside, things look really good for the president right now, and that is ignoring the clown show we call a Republican primary.

Does this mean Obama will win? No, and I hope the president is running like he is 10 points down. But anyone making portfolio decisions based on a belief Obama will leave office soon is simply a fool.

And suddenly it makes sense these words could come from Allen West's mouth.

Brokering Jeb

Could a disaster be brewing for the RNC when they get to Tampa this year? I don't push much credence in the continued chatter about the Republican nomination going to a brokered convention, but I thought I'd weigh in based on a report in The Hill getting some play. Apparently, some people want to make Jeb Bush the nominee:
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The Bush secret agenda has been a subliminal theme for months with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the favored proxy and pitchman. At CPAC it broke through to the surface: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, says that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee. It made Drudge this weekend.
---

I will concede that with the convention in Florida, Jeb Bush may actually seem a viable option in a brokered convention. While I would never vote for him, Jeb Bush would be a good candidate for president, and that is probably the only job that would draw him back to the public sector. But if he actually wants to be, you know, president, this would be a poor route to take.

So let's list the obvious problems here, starting with some Jeb-specific issues. Jeb's last name is Bush. If that name doesn't ring any bells to you, then the Republicans efforts in the last four years to erase anyone's memories of that name may actually be working. But for most people, the name Bush is a quick reminder of how we got into the greatest economic disaster in three generations. Jeb is much smarter and practical than his older brother, but I don't think he can convince America of that between late August, when the Republican National Convention will be held, and early November, when President Obama is scheduled right now to win reelection in a landslide. Jeb could probably win Florida, but there is nowhere else in the country where voters have a solid comfort with who Jeb Bush is and what style he might bring to the job. There may be no candidate who could communicate in just 10 weeks everything voters want to know about their next president. Jeb certainly cannot.

And that gets to the larger problems with a brokered convention. This whole process we are going through? Where we savage Mitt Romney as a wussy moderate, Rick Santorum as a gay-bating asshole who hates Google and Newt Gingrich as a womanizing friendless insider? For reasons known only to those sane enough to stay away from politics, Jeb Bush took a pass on that whole ordeal. But to step in after millions of Republican voters have sweat over which clown to vote for, people like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Sarah Palin were not on the ballot. I think that once Republican delegates start to think about it, they will get over the fact that they only have losing options to choose from this year and realize that pissing off every Republican rank-and-file voter who bothered showing up at the polls this year would do damage both in this election cycle and beyond.

Which is why I think a brokered convention is still unlikely.

But if Jeb Bush does usurp the will of voters (not that a history of such action can be brought up or anything), it will be good for Democrats now and in the future. Running as your party's nominee for president isn't something you get to do twice.

Be my guest, Jeb. Get it over with now.

Grab The Popcorn, Mica-Adams Fight Coming

Or at least that is what both parties say right now. Via the Sentinel:

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After weeks of silence, U.S. Rep. John Mica of Winter Park said Wednesday that he plans to run for re-election in a redrawn congressional district centered on Seminole County — setting up a potentially bruising primary with fellow Republican Sandy Adams of Orlando... If neither budges, a Mica-Adams primary could be a rough-and-tumble affair. Mica chairs the House Transportation Committee and would bring to bear all the weapons of an old bull Republican – well-heeled connections groomed by two decades on Capitol Hill... Adams, though, can count on the backing of the Tea Party caucus and could cast the race as a battle for the soul of the Republican Party.
---

If you want to read all of the Republican inside baseball, I encourage you to check out the article.

It seems to me, though, that this is a fight that the Tea Party will lose. Mica is all the good things about the establishment when it comes to serving the interests of his own voters. Road projects are the type of pork everybody ultimately ends up calling a good thing.

As for Adams, I like people to take a moment and realize what she and her like really want when they talk about the soul of the Republican Party by reading here and here.

But the real thing that Democrats should be looking for is a good candidate in the 6th, where creepy Ruth Chris Steakhouse ex-CEO Craig Miller poses for now the best hope for the GOP. In a year where the 99 percent are especially angry at bastards who got rich doing a bad job in the private sector, I think the Republicans are cooking us a pick-up seat.