Charlie Crist just hurts himself more and more every time he opens his mouth. In January, when he decides to quit the Senate primary (you heard it hear first) and get back in the Florida Governor’s race, he’s going to be doing some scrambling to douse the flames on all the bridges he is burning.

In the latest rant against Marco Rubio Crist attacks Rubio for voting for tax increases in Florida, which were actually unanimously endorsed and Jeb Bush sponsored refusals to roll back property taxes for education initiatives. Crist is also attacking Rubio for wanting to get rid of property taxes by raising sales taxes, a measure that Crist had actually suggested in the first place.

It that wasn’t bad enough, Crist called himself pro-life, ignoring that until recently he called himself pro-choice and called himself “anti-tax” despite proposing and signing into law several recent tax hikes on Florida citizens.

But it gets even better.

Crist also attacked conservatives generally. He pointed out a left wing Daily Kos poll that shows people who question Barack Obama’s citizenship support Marco Rubio. He called conservatives supporting Rubio “angry.” Then he said something peculiar.

“There are a lot of Republicans that don’t have the inclination to go to executive committee meetings,” he said. “There is wide swath of republican voters out there that don’t necessarily listen to cable tv all the time.”

Now, I don’t know if he means that as a good thing or a bad thing. My suspicion is Crist views people who show up at GOP meetings and watch cable news as bad for him. Why? Because all of the county GOP executive committee’s in Florida are backing Marco Rubio and the cable channels are documenting Crist’s flip-flops with great diligence. In other words, Crist is hoping a lot of ignorant voters show up to vote for him on election day.

Well, we knew Crist was desperate, but pulling the race card seems really low even for him, given all the videos circulating out there about Crist’s personal life. Good grief.

Race42008.com has the video circulating by the “Truth About Rubio” website we previously exposed as the creation of Rich Heffley, produced in the offices of the Republican Party of Florida.

The video shows Marco Rubio speaking in spanish, then has a clip of Barack Obama referring to Marco Rubio as a Cuban, then says no way “WE” can trust Rubio.

Really? Because he’s Cuban? Really?

That’s pathetic.

This is great news.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s sons plans to hold a private fundraiser for insurgent GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio next month, Rubio told Fox News. 

The active involvement of George P. Bush and Jeb Bush Jr. in the race raises the possibility that their father could endorse Rubio down the road and give his campaign added momentum against the GOP front-runner, Gov. Charlie Crist.

Jeb Bush, who has dismissed suggestions he’ll support Rubio, still is enormously popular in the state, with a recent poll pegging his approval rating at 70 percent, outshining Crist. His backing could help Rubio offset Crist’s considerable fundraising advantage. 

Crist and Rubio, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, are facing off to fill the Senate seat vacated by former Sen. Mel Martinez. 

Governor Bush is incredibly popular in Florida still, with over 70% of Republicans in Florida saying they’d rather him than Crist. Likewise, over 50% of independent women say Jeb is a better governor.

In addition to Governor Bush, both of his sons remain quite popular in Florida and especially among conservatives, where they have been refreshingly candid in their support of small government and freedom.

Having their support in and of itself is great, but it is also pretty clearly a tacit endorsement from their dad.

This get even more momentum going in Rubio’s direction.

It is almost an admission by the Crist campaign that his campaign is garbage. Governor Crist’s long time communications director is out.

After a run of bad publicity, Gov. Charlie Crist will go the route of so many chief executives hampered by falling poll numbers or botched public relations: shaking up the communications team.

Crist’s office confirmed Wednesday he is parting ways with longtime communications director Erin Isaac, who has long been an influential advisor to an image-obsessed governor. Crist chief of staff Shane Strum said Isaac told him Tuesday she was leaving to pursue other opportunities.

Her exit speaks to Crist’s sagging fortunes. It follows two weeks of unbelievably bad press in which Crist denied he knew that President Barack Obama was visiting troops in Jacksonville, and then denied he ever “endorsed” the president’s economic stimulus package despite campaigning with Obama for its passage in Fort Myers.

If that wasn’t bad enough for Crist, Scott Rothstein, a prominent Florida attorney, is now under federal investigation for a Ponzi scheme. Rothstein is one of Charlie Crist’s big financial backers. This is all the more troubling because Crist was Attorney General of Florida before becoming Governor four years ago. Rothstein’s relationship with Crist could raise some serious questions.

Rothstein has given the Florida Republican Party and Crist around $500,000.00 in the last few years.

Good grief. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has never had to run a real primary against a real Republican and it is starting to show.

About a week or so ago, Crist lied and said he had never supported Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, despite signing a letter of support, appearing with Obama on video, and producing a personal video in favor of the stimulus.

But it gets better.

When Barack Obama headed to Florida the other day, reporters asked Charlie Crist if he was going and Crist claimed he did not even know Barack Obama was in Florida that day.

According to an Open Records Act request, Crist very much did know.

E-mails obtained by the St. Petersburg Times this week through a public records request cast doubt on that claim. The messages prove Crist’s office was aware of the visit, and it seems unlikely his aide would have dismissed Crist going to Jacksonville without checking with Crist.

He’s not commenting further. He doesn’t have to.

Here’s a video of Florida Governor Charlie Crist, in his own words, saying “During the town hall [with Barack Obama], I reiterated my support for the federal stimulus package, and pledged to the people of Florida that here in Florida we stand ready to use our share of the money quickly and responsibly to create new jobs and serve our most vulnerable citizens.”

But where it gets interesting is that Crist believes Florida needed to get its “fair share” of the stimulus. It’s a “bridge of help,” in Crist’s words.

That’s not very conservative language — he says twice that Florida should get its “fair share.” That sounds more welfare queen than conservative. With the stimulus’s help and Charlie Crist’s support, Florida has seen a loss of 165,100 jobs since the stimulus passed. That’s one heck of a bridge of help.

Well done, Charlie.

This is really funny. The St. Petersburg Times is painting a picture of Marco Rubio as not a conservative, but a political opportunist.

After a week of negative attention and a website designed to paint Rubio as a liberal, Charlie Crist finally had to hire some journalists to do it.

Rubio’s fiscal conservatism was called into question as soon as he assumed the role of speaker. He spent hundreds of thousands on renovations, including a private dining room for lawmakers, hired the highest-paid spokesman in state government (one with no state government experience) and added more than 20 jobs, including a parliamentarian earning nearly $134,000.

The whole article is designed to expose hypocrisy in Rubio’s record, much of it easily explained away. But keep this in mind, here is what the exact same newspaper wrote about Marco Rubio just last year:

“Rubio, the young Republican speaker from Miami, has been a particular disappointment…Rubio would have had more success if he had learned from Crist’s populism and willingness to compromise instead of clinging to the hard-edged conservatism of his mentor, former Gov. Jeb Bush.”

But there’s more.

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The saga of Charlie Crist’s love for Barack Obama’s stimulus is getting out of hand and harder every day to keep up with.

In February, Crist sent a letter to Barack Obama saying Crist supported the stimulus.

Later that month, Crist stood on stage to praise the stimulus and Barack Obama. In return, Obama called Crist his favorite Republican.

Then two nights ago, Crist said he had never supported the stimulus.

Then last night, Charlie Crist praised the stimulus.

This serpentine maneuvering back and forth on the stimulus is really becoming funny. Either Crist likes and supported the stimulus or he did not. We know he did. We know he supported it. We know he embraced, literally, Barack Obama. So why the waffling?

He either has dementia or just thinks he is a good liar. Neither is useful in this election.

Charlie Crist welcomed Barack Obama to Florida last February, hugged him, grinned when Obama called Crist “his favorite Republican,” and then explained why the Democrats’ stimulus was a good thing.

That was February.

Yesterday, Charlie Crist denied it ever happened. Despite the videotaped evidence, Charlie Crist says he never once supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the formal name of the stimulus.

This all comes as news to the President, who hugged Crist, and who got this letter from Crist back on February 3, 2009. In the letter, signed by Crist, as well as Governors Patterson, Patrick, Corzine, and several others, Crist and the other Democrat Governors wrote “to express [their] support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which passed last week in the House and is under consideration currently in the Senate.” Crist even took claim to being “steward[] of the econom[y] of [his] respective state[] and region[].”

So either Crist was lying when he sent the letter and stood on stage to embrace Obama and bask in Obama’s glory, or he is lying now when he says he never supported it.

Either way, he is lying.

Funny. The NRSC’s Chairman John Cornyn says the NRSC is sitting Florida out and won’t spend a nickel there. That’s fine. Of course they did just send out a big memo to NRSC donors and others highlighting all of the up coming opportunities for them to give Charlie Crist money.

The most interesting thing about the list is that an event for Carly Fiorina is also listed, but I thought the NRSC hadn’t endorsed her. Bwahahahaha. I know. Who am I kidding.

In case you too want to do that or show up with protest signs, the list of events, addresses, and even hosts (!!!) is below the fold.

Impressive that he has so many in Florida. Usually he goes out of state to raise his cash since fewer and fewer in Florida like him.

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One anonymous internet attack out of the offices of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) against the Rubio team is a bit much. But two?

There has been another one.

Last time, Rich Heffley, one of Charlie Crist’s top guys and on the payroll of the RPOF, orchestrated an entire attack against Marco Rubio online, trying to be anonymous, that came complete with a Hitler video attacking Charlie Crist so, you know, they could say Rubio was behind the Hitler attack.

This time, Republican Party field operations director Tim Nungesser created a Twitter account posing as Brevard County GOP Chairman Jason Steele. Nungesser then sent out a bunch of tweets making Steele, a recovering alcoholic, look like he was drinking again, harassing others, etc.

Why?

Because Brevard County GOP Chairman Jason Steele is backing Marco Rubio.

Two anonymous internet attacks against the Rubio team all coming from one office building — that of the Florida GOP’s headquarters — may be coincidence, but a coincidence that suggests the RPOF is wholly in the tank for one side in a primary and in the tank enough to have created an internal atmosphere thoroughly hostile to its very own members who don’t toe the party line.

Which Florida Republican leader will the Florida GOP attack next? Jeb?

Republicans are - rightly - crowing this morning about the GOP’s victories in the New Jersey Governor’s race and a battery of races in Virginia from the Governorship on down and what they say about the turn in the national mood, if not in a pro-Republican direction then at least in a direction that’s sufficiently hostile to the Democrats that voters in states won by Obama and dominated by the Democrats in the last few years are willing to give individual Republicans another chance.

But the key word there, even in an across-the-board sweep like happened in Virginia, is individual. There remains an ongoing battle on the Right over how Republicans choose which candidates to support - who voters and the national party organs should back in primaries, when and whether to support third party candidacies, etc. It’s a battle intensified by Doug Hoffman’s loss in the NY-23 race after the NRCC-backed candidate, Dede Scoazzafava, ended up swinging the race to the Democrats when she endorsed Bill Owens. But in making sense of such debates, this is a point that cannot be stressed enough: no matter how favorable or unfavorable the overall national climate may be, no matter what ideological compass you want the party to follow, you can’t ever overlook the importance of the individual candidates and the conditions they run in. I said it in 2008 with regard to presidential campaigns, and it’s true as well of races for Governor, Senate or House: ideas don’t run for president, people do.

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This is stunning hypocrisy.

The head of Republican Senate campaign efforts said late Monday that GOPers in New York’s 23rd district “[paid] the price” for picking a nominee in a hotly contested special election behind closed doors.

But wait . . . it gets better.

NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh said on Monday that Cornyn’s tweet was directed at the local party and not at the NRCC or RNC.

So apparently, if the closed doors are located in Washington, D.C., everything is fine. If the closed doors are located in district, it is bad.

John Cornyn just expressed everything that is wrong with the Beltway Republican Establishment ^TM. And he has become so entrenched in it himself that he cannot see the hypocrisy.

He too went behind closed doors and picked Charlie Crist as the NRSC’s favorite in Florida and now we will do to John Cornyn and the NRSC in Florida exactly what we did in NY-23 to the NRCC and Pete Sessions — clean their clocks.

The NRCC spent $900,000.00 to get Dede Scozzafava elected and failed. John Cornyn told me months ago that the NRSC was picking Crist so the NRSC could free up money to go elsewhere.

The rational for that decision no longer holds water. If the NRSC does not stand down in Florida, Cornyn will further contribute to the party schism Pete Sessions started in NY-23.

And by the way, multiple County Chairs in NY-23 said they chose Scozzafava on the advice and input of the NRCC.

Dede Scozzafava is out. We must now do to Crist what we did to Scozzafava. He’s even more a potential menace simply by virtue of being a potential Senator.

At first he would neither confirm nor deny it. Then Rich Heffley insisted he was not behind the anti-Rubio website truthaboutrubio.com, but he knew who was.

Now Rich Heffley admits it was all him.

Notice how he waits until a Friday night to do it.

Heffley still denies he was also behind the Hitler video despite removing everything about it from his website when we made the connection and saying the Hitler video was the whole reason for starting the website.

Can we believe him on this after his denials on everything else?

And why the heck would you erase all traces of the Hitler video from your website if that very video was your whole reason for setting up the website? By the way, the video has also disappeared off YouTube. Hmm . . .

Poor Rich Heffley.

After refusing to deny his involvement in the anti-Rubio website to a reporter yesterday and refusing to deny his involvement in the anti-Crist Hitler video, today he is issuing a non-denial. You see, it was not him who set up the website, but he passed along lots of the research.

So . . . considering the source file we found . . . is that an admission that someone else in the offices of the Republican Party of Florida set up the website? If so, there is a serious coordinate problem under federal law.

Heffley also says it is “insane” to think he created the Hitler video. Allegedly, someone forwarded it to him within three days of its creation and posting without fanfare on YouTube and Heffley got his dander up so much that he . . . errr . . . someone who he knows but will not name despite the source code showing it happened in his office . . . created a brand new website three days later and made that video the star of the show.

Right.

Riiiigggghhhtttttt.

By the way, it is important to remember exactly why Charlie Crist and Rich Heffley have tried to distract everyone by playing the Hitler and crappy website cards.

Why? Not because of this newscast, but because of this one.

Charlie Crist is the front runner in the Florida Senate race. He is also the incumbent Governor of Florida. By any reasonable measure, including fundraising, the Florida Senate race should be his for the taking.

Except it is not happening for him. Charlie Crist is becoming so desperate that his campaign has descended to farcical parodies of Nixonian tactics. The campaign has decided to attack itself and blame Marco Rubio. We know this because, when caught, their lame cover up proved they were behind everything.

Let’s review from the very beginning.

Marco Rubio announced he would be running for the United States Senate.

Then Charlie Crist got in.

The Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Bob Greer, decides to invoke a little known and rarely used rule of the Florida GOP to deny Rubio ballot access in the primary.

Local parties across Florida revolt. Rubio stays in.

Last quarter, Rubio has pretty crummy fundraising numbers relative to Crist. Crist ignored him.

But then something happened. Rubio kept inching up toward Crist in the polls, closing a 40 point gap to right about 14 points. Then his fundraising efforts kicked in and he raised around a million dollars last quarter. Crist is now panicked.

The lame attacks of a man who has never had to run a seriously contested primary kicked in. How they campaign handled the attacks and cover up of the attacks suggests Crist is running an amateur race.

It all started on October 24, 2009, or 5 days ago.

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Within an hour last night of RedState tying the anti-Crist (no, not anti-Christ) Hitler video to Crist’s own campaign team in an effort to smear Marco Rubio, the website Crist’s team set up had been taken completely offline.

It’s back up today thanking RedState for giving it exposure. It’s kind of hard for us to send traffic their way when they have to take the site down. Notice, with the site back up, that they have scrubbed the Hitler video from the site, they have also completely scrubbed and redone the articles after we pointed out that they were violating the copyright laws of every major news organization in Florida, and they have not denied anything we’ve said.

But wait, there is more.

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UPDATE: Within an hour of posting this, the anti-Rubio site is now totally offline — server will not respond.

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The plot thickens in Florida.

A video popped up on YouTube on October 24, 2009, using the standard Hitler clip all the kids are using these days to mock Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s Senate campaign against conservative stalwart and Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. Naturally, it was an anonymous account that was also created on October 24, 2009.

Three days later, the Crist campaign launched it’s anti-Marco Rubio website called truthaboutrubio.com. The star of the website was the Hitler video. The website ran a poll alleging Rubio’s campaign was behind the video and the website condemned Rubio for it.

When RedState pointed out that Rich Heffley’s name appeared in the source code of the website, Heffley had the website taken down and his name was scrubbed.

But we also were quick to point out the timeline and relationship between this “anonymous” website and the anonymously created Hitler video.

Well, when the website came back online, every reference to the Hitler video had vanished. The poll was gone too, replaced by one about having two government jobs.

Except that Heffley failed to also delete his twitter post trying to tie Marco to the HItler video. You can see a screenshot here in case this too gets deleted.

If you follow the link in the tweet, you arrived at a page that says “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.”

Why would the allegedly anonymous website designed to attack Marco Rubio scrub both Rich Heffley’s name from the website and delete all references to the Hitler video and its possible ties to Rubio unless Heffley and the Crist campaign were connected to both?

I’ve put the original post here below the fold. It needs to now be substantially updated and is worth rewriting.

This morning, to great fanfare in Florida, an anonymous website called truthaboutrubio.com went live.

The website was registered one day ago on October 27, 2009, but it purported to have content all the way back to 2007.

RedState probed the source code of the website and found this:

img src=”///Users/rheffley/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png” alt=”" /

Who is rheffley? How about Rich Heffley.

Mr. Heffley played a key role in getting Charlie Crist elected Governor in 2006. More importantly, Mr. Heffley is now Charlie Crist’s top advisor in his Florida Senate race. Mr. Heffley’s business address is 420 E Jefferson St, Tallahassee, FL, which is the address of the Florida Republican Party. Mr. Heffley rents office space from the Florida GOP and the Florida GOP pays him $10,000.00 a month. His business partners are Jim Rhimes and Randy Enwright. If Enwright’s name sounds familiar, it should. He’s been heavily involved in the GOP and is the Republican National Committee’s field consultant.

I tried to call Mr. Heffley for comment and he would not call me back. A St. Petersburg Times reporter did get Mr. Heffley to answer. Mr. Heffley refused to answer questions about the website and within minutes of that phone call the website was taken down.

About an hour later, the website came back up and the source code identifying Mr. Heffley had disappeared.

Not also that Charlie Crist denied any involvement with this website, but knew enough to know that the one day old website contained press clippings “all in the public domain.”

That is an admission against interests that Charlie Crist’s campaign is responsible for this website. That also creates a potentially serious breach of federal law for Charlie Crist.

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