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.

Funny. A lot of people thought the Club for Growth had endorsed Marco Rubio.

They had not . . . at least until today.

It is now certain that Charlie Crist will get a run for his money in Florida. The Club for Growth is today announcing its endorsement of Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race.

They’ll bundle a lot of money for Marco making this an extremely competitive primary. Charlie Crist’s no good, rotten, very awful week just keeps getting worse.

“The Club for Growth PAC has spent months studying this race, and we have concluded that either Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio would be heavily favored to win next November against likely Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek,” Chris Chocola, President of the Club for Growth, said. “The only question now is what kind of Republican will Florida send to Washington next year: a pro-growth Republican with a record of fiscal conservatism or a big-government Republican with a record of tax increases?”

Nice.

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.

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?

Well, the one Republican in Washington, D.C. today who seems to have had a realistic assessment of what took place yesterday is John Cornyn, the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He made sure to tell a reporter that the NRSC will not spend any money in Florida for Crist or against Rubio.

Most curious in his statement were three words:

“As far as what’s happening in specifically Florida — we made a decision to endorse Gov. Crist at his request. But we’re really not involved in the primary,” Cornyn told Manu. “That’s up to the voters in Florida.”

So . . . um . . . the NRSC didn’t really want to endorse Crist, but Crist very much wanted them to so he could look like the establishment guy? That’s what I take from this. If Crist wants to own the mantel of “GOP Establishment Candidate,” let’s tie it around his waist and throw him in one of Florida’s many lagoons.

Make no mistake about it, the only reason that endorsement happened was not to help Crist, but to stop donors from giving money to Rubio. Now that this is no longer a reality or possibility, the NRSC is throwing Charlie to wolves.

The message from John Cornyn to everyone seems very clear, “We’re not as screwed up as the NRCC and will not be playing in Florida.”

See? Just one of the very many reasons NY-23 was a victory for conservatives.

Now go make a donation to Marco Rubio. Remember NY-23.

There is something about New York’s 23rd Congressional District that reporters and the GOP establishment are ignoring. According to the PPP poll and the Sienna poll, Doug Hoffman is expanding the base of voters willing to vote for a conservative, not shrinking the base as the press alleges.

In talking about this race this morning with Joe Scarborough on his radio show, he talked about the parallels to his race in 1994. Getting on Lexis-Nexis and doing some digging was an eye opening experience.

It is also a powerful reminder for House Republicans wanting to take back the House that they are going to need to ignore the NRCC and instead go right where right can win.

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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 . . .

In a previous post I wrote some unkind (note: not ‘inaccurate’) words about Jon Corzine, and how he’s not being especially brave this election cycle. Of course, given that this guy (Rep. Alan Grayson, D-FL) is held up as a standard for speaking-truth-to-power among the Left, maybe that’s not so surprising:

That was taken from a larger clip done by O’Reilly and improved with several stills showing politicians from both parties doing precisely what Alan Grayson is whining that nobody expects him to do: answer questions in the hallway, just as if he was a regular human being and everything. You’d think that a guy who’s trying to make a buck off of his supposed tough-guy image would be eager to appear on a show like O’Reilly and take the fight to Fox; then again, that would assume that you believed that said tough-guy image was actually true to begin with.

No wonder that Central Floridan activists have already created a site dedicated to getting rid of him next year (H/T: the Orlando Sentinel). Normally, this sort of thing waits until there’s an actual candidate for opposition to coalesce around; then again, normally sitting Congressmen don’t call female civil servants ‘K Street whores.’

Moe Lane

PS: You know, Grayson: you weren’t the only person in the universe who was always picked last for dodgeball. It’s just that the rest of us mostly got over it in college.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The video tells the whole story …

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.

————————————-

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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