Word: gop
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...Governor Charlie Crist dropping into a tie with former state House speaker Marco Rubio - an underdog Crist had led by more than 20 points last summer - in next year's Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate. But the next day, Crist was still being Crist. Seemingly ignoring the GOP conservatives who've been lambasting him for reversing much of the red-meat legacy of his predecessor, Jeb Bush, Crist enthusiastically signed a bill expanding passenger rail in Florida - including a high-speed train system Bush made a point of quashing five years ago. The measure, Crist said, will take...
...misgivings about health care reform and other harbingers of big government, Republican purists have targeted Crist's moderate, bipartisan style. Seizing on his embrace of President Obama's $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, they've treated him as a whipping boy for everything that's wrong with the battered GOP as well as Florida's recession-ravaged economy, whose unemployment rate of 11.5% is the state's worst since 1975. Along the way they've anointed Rubio, a 38-year-old Cuban American, as the right wing's new boy wonder, a genuinely conservative David who can slay Crist...
...litany of complaints. They claimed that South Carolina's senior senator "in the name of bipartisanship continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism." The group, closely aligned with the Tea Party movement, accused Graham of holding the GOP "hostage" for engaging on global warming and even lambasted him for having "stated on many occasions that his primary concern is to 'be relevant.'" Graham, who won reelection in a landslide last year, isn't worried. "I've never felt threatened by people who say that it's a crime...
...House in 1994, one of 32 Republican candidates who signed on to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. A former Air Force lawyer, Graham drew national attention in 1998 as one of the managers of the House's impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Still, in 2000, he bucked the GOP establishment's pick of George W. Bush and backed McCain in the Palmetto State primary. After Graham won his Senate seat in 2002, he and McCain became close. The Arizona senator, 73, often says Graham, 54, is like a son to him, and perhaps a little of McCain's maverickness...
Graham's Republican colleagues have grown to trust his leadership, which is why he can boast that if he signs on to the final climate bill, several other GOP senators will follow. "I'm fairly confident that there's a point that he won't go past and there's a question of whether that's a satisfactory ending point for the debate," says Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican. Graham, after all, knows when to draw the line. Earlier this year he was the only Republican willing to work with the Administration to close Guantanamo. But when...