On March 4, then on March 10, and a week later in The Hill, I noted Arlen Specter's precarious position within his own party, and suggested his best ploy for survival was a party switch.
On April 28, Specter switched. It really was his only rational course.
Much the same dynamic will soon be playing out in the Florida Senate race between former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist. Currently, the polls show that Crist's greater name recognition gives him a fairly dominant lead. But the primary is 14 months away, and grassroots conservatives are moving over to Rubio en masse. He will have enough money to compete (Club for Growth, among others, are behind him), he's got big names like Mike Huckabee gathering behind him, and the right-wing noise machine loves him -- and not just Florida wingnut radio, but national outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. And with pictures like this in their arsenal, conservatives will have all the ammo they need to bring down Crist:
It won't take 14 months for that alliance to drag Crist through the mud and trash his name with Republicans in a state with a closed primary. All those Dems and Independents who love Crist won't have a say in the matter in the Republican contest. And I predict that by the end of the year (or end of Q1 2010 at the latest), the polls in that Republican primary will be tied.
So the question will then be -- at what point will Crist realize that he's in deep shit? It took collapsing poll numbers for Specter to hit the "panic!" button and switch parties. That's probably what it'll take for Crist to realize his problems, and when he does, he'll have a tough call to make: go down with his party, or pull a Specter and ditch it for better electoral prospects on a different line. That could mean a switch to the Democratic Party where he'd likely be no worse than the other senator from Florida, Bill Nelson -- a marginally good Democrat, a step up from Landrieu, Nebraska's Nelson, and the Wal Mart Twins (and no better). Or it could mean an independent run, where he might be able to pull a Lieberman (complete with a Joementum fundraising campaign visit) and work to attract independents, mainstream Republicans, and Democrats disaffected by their poor field and try to win a split three-way field.
The Florida candidate filing deadline is May 10, 2010 (the primary isn't until August). So there's plenty of time for this scenario to unfold. Now to be clear -- this isn't something I'm rooting for, just an observation based on political realities, but it sure would be hilarious to see Sen. John Cornyn see another of his highly touted Senate candidates defect to the Democratic Party. That alone might make it all worth it.