Daily Loaf

Charlie Crist has a number of critics inside the Sunshine State, and a growing number outside as well.

Fodder for those critics was shelved out on Monday when Forbes columnist Reihan Salam penned a column called “America’s Worst Governor?”

Salam is the co-author (along with NY Times columnist Ross Douthat) of Grand New Party, an acclaimed look at the problems within the current Republican Party.

In his Forbes piece, Salam attacks Crist for being guilty of “free-lunchism”:

One can argue about the virtues of federal borrowing to stimulate the economy. Because state governments are obligated to balance their budgets, there is a solid case for having Washington offer a temporary countercyclical boost to cash-strapped states. But the notion that the federal stimulus plan gives state governments carte blanche to permanently ratchet up their spending levels while cutting taxes defies logic. Florida’s Constitution requires that the state government can’t use one-time funds, like windfall from privatization or federal stimulus dollars, to pay for more than 3% of recurring expenses.

Incredibly, Crist demanded that Florida use one-time funds to pay for 12% of the state budget.

Salam credits two embattled Democratic governors in the northeast (New York’s David Patterson and New Jersey’s Jon Corzine) for cutting more social programs than Crist has done in his tenure as governor.

Salam also chides some of the journalism about Crist’s race against Marco Rubio, using this week’s Joe Klein column as example A of an analyst superficially looking at the race:  that is, as a battle between the moderate Crist and the more ideologically conservative Rubio.

Klein writes that Crist’s future depends in part on the economy improving.  I’m not sure if I get that.  And I certainly don’t get this comment from Crist’s ally, state Party Chair Jim Greer, sounding like a paragon of rationality:

“Lord, save me from the purists,” says Jim Greer, the state’s Republican Party chairman and a Crist supporter. “If the party keeps going in this direction, all we’ll have left will be three people sitting around a table. They’ll be absolutely pure, but none of them will be holding office.”

That’s sort of humorous, as Greer and Crist appeal to the Washington-based Klein that they are the adults in the GOP big tent that’s been dominated by the Joe Wilsons and Marco Rubios.  Except who was it who accused Barack Obama of trying to indoctrinate socialism into children last month?  Oh, yeah, Jim Greer.

Meanwhile, Politifact weighs in on the governor’s recent claims in a new radio ad that proclaim he has cut government spending by 10% since he took office.  The fact-finding group lists the claim as “barely true,” writing that with revenues down and the requirement that he turn in a balanced budget, it was either cut spending or raise taxes.

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