Word: crist
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When President Barack Obama took his stimulus road show into Florida on Tuesday, Governor Charlie Crist was waiting, tapping his foot. Crist, a Republican, is actually six months ahead of Washington in the stimulus game: in August, in response to his state's economic implosion, he launched Accelerate Florida, which is pouring out more than $28 billion in stored-up state funds for the kind of infrastructure and school-construction projects that are still being debated inside the Beltway. (See pictures from the historic Election...
...time Crist announced Accelerate Florida, few if any fellow Republicans seemed to condemn the idea. And that makes it all the more curious to Crist and other moderate Republicans that now, when states' budget crises are even worse, conservative Republican governors in states like Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alaska are following GOP leaders on Capitol Hill in adamant opposition to Obama's federal stimulus package...
...this package as a pragmatic, commonsense opportunity to move forward," Crist, who appeared with Obama in economically beleaguered Fort Myers today to tout the stimulus, told TIME on Monday night. "I didn't campaign for Obama, we don't agree on everything, but he's my President, and my job is to help Florida stay in the black." Introducing Obama at the town-hall meeting, Crist said it was not just important "that we support this stimulus package" but that "we do it in a bipartisan way ... It's about rising above" partisanship...
...just 'get along.'" Despite his disdain for Washington, the Senate would at least "give Jeb a bully pulpit," says a friend. That could help him keep his party from falling too far into the centrist, bipartisan hands of new Republican leaders like his successor, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who last month hosted a GOP governors conference in Bush's home city of Miami, where that more pragmatic politics was trumpeted. Even if Bush doesn't run, "considering it" at least sends the signal that after two years ensconced in private family life, he's back in the game and will...
...Crist's possibly tepid enthusiasm for a Bush bid could be another important factor. It seems unlikely that "the Sunshine Governor," whose popularity and approval ratings have eclipsed even Jeb's (though Crist calls Bush Florida's "greatest governor"), would want to move from the governor's mansion of the nation's new bellwether state to an opposition backbench on Capitol Hill. But Crist's national aspirations were on display this year when John McCain courted him as a possible running mate, and the governor's first term ends, coincidentally, after the 2010 election. Even if Crist decided...