Word: republicanisms
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...make before the Senate reconvenes next month, certainly won't be someone who could run against him in next year's GOP primary or steal too much of the political limelight until then. But he can still make a statement. The question is whether he wants to please the Republican Party's conservative base - the voters he apparently feels he needs to win Florida's closed primary - or appeal to the more centrist, nonwhite and nonmale electorate that the governor has made a career of reaching out to and that the GOP will need in the general election...
Still, many indicators suggest Crist might help himself and his party by taking what prominent Florida political analyst Susan MacManus calls "the more forward-looking route for Republicans." Martinez, who also served briefly as chairman of the Republican National Committee, insists he's quitting the Senate to spend more time with his family. But the Senate's first Cuban-American member is also leaving under a cloud of frustration with his party's vitriol against immigration reform and the Sotomayor appointment. In 2008 the GOP's anti-immigration stance helped drop John McCain's share of the Latino vote...
Since he declared his candidacy for next year's U.S. Senate race, Florida's usually moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist, has been accused of pandering to conservatives. He even opposed Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, a questionable move in a state with one of the nation's largest Latino populations. But since Florida GOP Senator Mel Martinez last week resigned the seat Crist is running for, the governor now has the rather weird duty of appointing an interim successor to the job he eventually wants. (He insists he won't appoint himself.) His choice could have...
Crist is likely to go the former - and safer - route by choosing an experienced, recognized Florida Republican. Some of the possibilities include former governor Bob Martinez, 74, and former state attorney general and secretary of state Jim Smith, 68, once a conservative Democrat who jumped to the GOP in the late 1980s and helped it become Florida's dominant party by the turn of the century...
...Floridians voted for Bush in 2004, 52% went for Obama last year. As a result, says MacManus, a political-science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, "Crist could end up making a bold appointment when you consider how helpful a little diversity would be to the Republican image at this point...