Charlie Crist going negative on Rubio

This is what the National Republican Senatorial Committee is endorsing:

Buffeted by weeks of negative press and a newly threatening rival from the right, FL Gov. Charlie Crist's (R) campaign will step up direct engagements with his opponent, insiders tell OnCall.
Crist will attack former FL House Speaker Marco Rubio (R), citing his rival's failure to advance some conservative causes while leading the state House, for spending excessively while in the Speaker's office and for dragging his feet on immigration legislation that many Republicans favored.
"We're now running a campaign, and it's one where this campaign will aggressively talk about the governor and his record and his vision heading to Washington as a candidate for the Senate, and we will aggressively talk to voters about our opponent's record, a record that was eight years in the state legislature, a record that has not been discussed to date," said Eric Eikenberg, Crist's new campaign manager.

So this is what your NRSC donations are paying for: Republican attacks on Marco Rubio, one of the most promising young Republican leaders in Florida.

NOT ONE RED CENT!

UPDATE: Pat Austin notes that Crist's new campaign manager has a predictable habit:

According to The Buzz, Rubio isn't worried about the addition of Eikenberg to the Crist team. Rubio supporters point to his work on the campaigns for both Clay Shaw and George LeMieux. They both lost.

More at Memeorandum.

Conservative Doug Hoffman slams Scozzafava in guest-blog at Malkin

The Conservative Party candidate in NY-23 whacks that RINO right between her beady little eyes:

I don’t think conservatives will be fooled. The more they learn about Dede Scozzafava, the worse she does in the polls. And the more they learn about my campaign, the better we do.
We can win this thing, but we're up against limited time and an awful RNC and NRCC decision to support a liberal candidate.
Well, if the Republican Party wants to declare war against conservatives, I'm going to fight on the side of conservatives.
If you want to join my fight, I need you. We need money and we need volunteers – boots on the ground. If you can help, go to my website and sign up. Then show up.
It’s time for conservatives to show the Republican establishment who's in charge.

Not just "yes," sir, but "Hell, yes!"

Trust me: Very Important People might make this The Mother Of All Showdowns with the RINO sellouts in the GOP Establishment. Lipstick, baby.

Full background on this crucial campaign at The American Spectator. I'm planning to travel to upstate New York in the coming week to cover the final push toward the Nov. 3 election. But before you hit my tip jar, be sure you hit Doug Hoffman's tip jar first.

GOP sells out! NRCC gives '6-figure' donation to RINO Scozzafava? SEND ME TO NEW YORK!

Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug Hoffman is surging in the NY-23 special election -- the Nov. 3 vote is now only 18 days away -- so guess what the worthless national GOP "leadership" has done?

The Republican National Committee also confirmed Friday that it was making a six-figure transfer to the National Republican Campaign Committee to help [wretched RINO Dede Scozzafava] in that race.
The NRCC has already spent nearly half a million dollars on advertising and other independent expenditures. And with the Scozzafava campaign on television only sparingly -- reportedly because of slow fundraising -- it has become the main source of advertising for the Republicans at this point.
The RNC is also giving $85,000 to the state party, the maximum allowed for a coordinated campaign, and has two staffers on the ground in the district.

Noting that Newt Gingrich (!) is also backing the liberal Scozzafava, Michelle Malkin comments:

If you have given to the NRCC, RNC, or Newt Gingrich under the impression that they are using the money to support conservatism, you might want to ask for your money back.

Last night I was on the phone with a source who got me hooked up with the Hoffman campaign. Red State has a fund-raiser to help the Hoffman campaign maintain their momentum. If you care about saving the Reagan legacy from the clueless idiots of the GOP Establishment, the Doug Hoffman campaign is Priority One until Nov. 4.

Once you've done what you can for Hoffman, however, if any readers want to send a New Media journalist with Old School skills to put some shoe leather on this important story, hit the freaking tip jar now!

UPDATE 2:30 p.m.: Just got off the phone with a Republican source in upstate New York who informed me that Jeri Thompson -- whose husband Fred has endorsed Hoffman -- was booked today on the Neal Cavuto show. However, Jeri got bumped because of "Balloon Boy" coverage. I am not making this up.

The three-way NY23 battle is now at the top of Memeorandum, BTW. Thanks to all who have hit the tip jar so far. Every $5 or $10 helps; don't know what the total trip budget will be yet. I'm talking to GOP sources about my plans and will have more soon.

UPDATE 3:05 p.m.: All right! Looks like the Great RINO Hunt is on! Bill Kristol casts his lot with the Tea Party people backing Hoffman:

A new poll in the November 3 special election for the congressional seat, NY-23, vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh, confirms what knowledgeable observers have suspected for a while: The candidacy of the official Republican nominee, liberal Dede Scozzafava, selected by local party officials and supported by the national Republican establishment, is collapsing. . . .

(Had that yesterday, Bill. Thanks for noticing.)

Today, the Wall Street Journal has a story on the race with the headline Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy. The truth is the opposite: The GOP establishment complicates the Republican and conservative comeback strategy.

Better late than never, I guess, and I'm sure the Hoffman campaign is grateful for the support. BTW, if you can follow Hoffman on Twitter and Facebook, and if you live near Plattsville, N.Y., they'll be opening a new local campaign headquarters there tonight.

Tea Party people unite! You have nothing to lose but those clueless idiots in the GOP establishment!

UPDATE: Start spreadin' the news . . .

If there's anything I hate more than January Jones' big fake boobies . . .

. . . it's big fake Republicans like Sen. Olympia Snowe:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) will vote to approve the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill on Tuesday. . . .
"My vote today is my vote today. It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," Snowe said. . . .
"I happen to think the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress," she added. . . .

I'd call her ugly names, but what name could possibly be uglier than "Olympia Snowe," a synonym for everything unprincipled, selfish, dishonest and loathsome in American politics today? A name that ranks with that of the despicable John Cornyn in defining the utter worthlessness of Republican "leadership" in Washington.

For years, the national GOP has funneled money into the campaign coffers of two-faced RINO weasels like Snowe, Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, et al., claiming that the existence of such fake Republicans provides some benefit to the party in general.

Exactly what this benefit is, no one has ever explained, since all these gutless wonders ever do is suck up money and whine, whine, whine -- and then stab the party in the back whenever a key vote comes up.

So now we see Cornyn and the NRSC backing Charlie Crist -- a less masculine clone of Olympia Snowe -- against Marco Rubio in Florida, and we know the answer to that:

NOT ONE RED CENT!

Let these self-serving RINOs swindle their money from some other bunch of suckers.

BTW, in reference to January Jones and the fake boob thing, I was Twittering about it and got this encouraging Tweet:

Not sure how many women will be replying, but..uh, well, that's encouraging to read. Sick of the fake boob craze.

That's Darcy, who has a sports blog. Real men like real boobs, not big fakies like Olympia Snowe.

UPDATE: Erick Erickson of Red State tries to beat me in the Snowe-Hating Derby:

Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent on corrupting this place too.

Pretty good. But try to top this one, Erick:

Q. What's the difference between Olympia Snowe and gonorrhea?
A. Gonorrhea can be treated with penicillin.

Back at ya . . .

Update, 2205 (Smitty):
Linked at American Glob.

NEW GOP SEX SCANDAL? Latino Politician Gets 'Sticky Fingers' WithFemale Right-Wing Journalist!

Don't you hate it when the MSM make a scandal out of something perfectly innocent like Marco Rubio's "posh hotel" rendezvous with Jillian Bandes?

Marco Rubio has sticky fingers, and he wants to rinse them off.
"Some of the pancake syrup got on my hands, I'll be right back," he told me in the lobby of his posh Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, D.C. just after breakfast.
Maybe he should've kept his sticky fingers. After all, the Florida House Speaker might have to go to some extraordinary lengths to get the cash he needs after the release of his latest fundraising numbers: he came in at $340,000, compared to his rival Gov. Charlie Crist's $4.3 million. . . .

Read the whole sticky thing.

NOT ONE RED CENT!

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who directed me to this July 8 video of an MSNBC appearance in which Jillian drove Jane Hamsher into paroxysms of seething rage:

Not that it is difficult to drive Jame Hamsher into seething rage, but didn't Jillian look cute doing it?

Hey, Jillian, what's up with the blond curls? Last time I saw you, your hair was auburn red and straight.

Letter to NRCC Chairman:NOT ONE RED CENT!

As previously announced here, Not One Red Cent will boycott the House Republican campaign committee until the Waxman-Markey Eight are repudiated. I've just posted my message to NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions:

It has become increasingly obvious of late that some Republicans have been in Washington too long. None of the eight GOP House members who voted for Waxman-Markey will be re-elected. They will either retire from the House, be defeated in next year's Republican primaries, or suffer well-deserved defeat on November 2, 2001. Therefore, every penny that the NRCC spends to support the re-election of the Waxman-Markey Eight is wasted money that could be used more effectively to support Republican challengers.
The NRCC must announce a policy of non-support for the Waxman-Markey Eight, or else NRCC fund-raising letters will go directly into the garbage cans of every previous grassroots GOP donor who is tired of seeing his contributions wasted to support nominal "Republicans" that repeatedly betray party principles. . . .

Please read the whole thing, and hit the tip jar to help support the Not One Red Cent blog. Of course, pixels are cheap, but determined persistence ought to be worth something.

UPDATE: Welcome Ed Driscoll readers. For the benefit of the uninitiated, perhaps I should explain the theory of organizational dynamics that informs my attitude toward Republican "leadership."

I am an ex-Democrat, so I have extensive experience in getting screwed over and backstabbed by clueless losers. And I've been a conservative journalist in Washington since 1997 so . . . ditto.

As I've said eleventy-zillion times, if you volunteer to be a doormat, don't complain about the footprints on your back. If you desire to retain your self-respect and dignity, you must retain sufficent independence to be willing to say, "That's it. No more. I quit. You've f***ed me over once too often."

This is not merely a principle of political life, but is of universal application in human affairs. For example, if you allow your spouse to abuse and betray you without fear of repercussions, you are as responsible for the consequences as the person who abuses and betrays you. My wife has my respect and loyalty, which she reciprocates insofar as I am deserving of her respect and loyalty. Which is to say, she trusts me about as far as she can throw me. Mrs. Other McCain's beauty is exceeded only by her wisdom.

After Friday night's Smittypalooza, several of us went out for hamburgers at a tavern near Dupont Circle. Our table was next to a group of three young people, two guys and a girl. Overhearing some remark one of them made -- he was from Alabama -- I struck up a jocular conversation. This conversation eventually disclosed that the three were "just friends," and that in fact the Alabamian among them was an intern of the supervision of the lady who (as someone else at our table subsequently remarked) as nearly as amused by my jokes as I was.

Sensing that my intentions might be misinterpreted, I found an opportunity to mention Mrs. Other McCain, to praise her virtues, and to add that we have six children. And if the point needed further emphasis I found an appropriate occasion to repeat one of my favorite sayings: "She's got a kitchen drawer full of knives, and I've got to sleep sometime."

There is truth in humor, and the same principle applies to any situation where your self-chosen loyalty is involved. I've been a University of Alabama Crimson Tide fan since I was a gamete swimming in a desperate effort to become a zygote. I can hardly conceive being anything but a 'Bama fan. Yet if the folks in Tuscaloosa should ever betray that loyalty, they would find me an implacable foe.

My loyalty to the Democratic Party was similarly hereditary. My parents would have been horrified if, in 1959, they had imagined one of their offspring might eventually vote Republican. Yet the Democrats, knowing this, took shameless advantage of that loyalty. These repeated betrayals were for years excused by me in the same way that a battered wife excuses her husband's brutality. Hell's bells, I voted for Mondale!

Then came the day that my Democratic congressman, George "Buddy" Darden, voted for the fateful legislative travesty that I recall as "The Great Gun Grab of 1994." On that day, the Democratic Party forever forfeited any further claim to my loyalty. On the first Tuesday in November of that year, I cast my first vote ever for a Republican congressional candidate -- some obscure Marietta lawyer named Barr -- thus joining the majority consensus that it was time that Mr. Darden returned to the private sector.

F*** you, Buddy Darden. And f*** you, Democrats. What part of "From My Cold Dead Hands" is so hard to understand?

Once burned, twice shy, and I could never be as blindly loyal to the Republicans as I once was to the Democrats. That kind of loyalty is for chumps. Being a partisan chump is an invitation to political rape. (Ask gay Democrats how that feels. Or ask some of the Christian conservatives who made the mistake of trusting Ralph Reed. If I ever own an outhouse, I'll name it in Reed's honor.)

Politicians will respect their constituents only if they fear their constituents. George "Buddy" Darden once thought he could screw me over without consequence, and learned otherwise in short order. Ralph Reed holds no elective office, nor will he ever. Mene mene tekel upharsin.

When the perfidious Catiline conspired to subvert the Roman republic, Cicero exposed the traitor:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? . . . Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? . . .
O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit.

Hic tamen vivit. But not for long, eh? The Waxman-Markey Eight have signed the death warrants of their political careers, and friends of the republic must be vigilant to expose anyone who aids this act of treachery.

Blame the NRCC

The Waxman-Markey Monstrosity From Hell That Will Destroy the American Economy passed the House by a vote of 219-212 last night while I was attending the inaugural Smittypalooza.

If only four votes had gone the other way, the monstrosity would have been defeated by a 216-215 vote. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate that Michelle Malkin has named the eight Republicans who voted for it. And I've got four words for the National Republican Congressional Committee:

Not One Red Cent.

We've already said Not One Red Cent for the National Republican Senatorial Committee because Sen. John Cornyn and the NRSC betrayed the GOP grassroots in Florida. Now, add the NRCC to the list.

What's the point of giving money to the national party if, on key votes, Republican members of the House are indistinguishable from Nancy Pelosi?

Why give money to the campaign committee whose job is to re-elect these RINO sellouts?

• Mary Bono Mack, California
• Mike Castle, Delaware
• Mark Kirk, Illinois
• John McHugh, New York
• Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey
• Leonard Lance, New Jersey
• Dave Reichert, Washington
• Chris Smith, New Jersey

Unless and until all eight of these swine announce their retirements -- or are defeated in next year's primaries -- I say the grassroots answer to the NRCC should be NOT ONE RED CENT!

Who's with me?

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin links. In the comments, my moderate Republican friend Joe Marier argues:

NJ Republicans in danger of getting redistricted out don't vote against the AFL-CIO, and neither do aspiring Senators in Delaware and Illinois.
Final challenge: name the 8 seats you will take back in exchange for those.
Let these eight get beat by Club For Growth-backed primary challengers, and figure the GOP would still win at least half of the subsequent general elections.

The belief that there is some sort of political security for blue-state Republicans in parroting Sierra Club propaganda and trying to buddy up to the AFL-CIO is akin to the college boy's belief that he can score with a Women's Studies major by espousing feminist cant. In all likelihood, she's a lesbian, but even if she weren't, why on earth would she be interested in the kind of guy who blabbers on about feminism?

VIDEO: What Charlie Crist Is Up Against

Moe Lane is becoming a believer. As I said at the Hot Air Green Room, everybody who has seen this video is asking the same question: Why in the world would John Cornyn and the NRSC back Charlie Crist against this guy?

Hat tips to Pat and Carol.

BTW, the Not One Red Cent rebellion is growing rapidly: 3,400 visits in the first four days, including nearly 1,400 yesterday, with a boost from Conservative Grapevine.

UPDATE: Now front page at Hot Air, and John Hawkins has just published the petition to the NRSC. If you're a blogger who wants to sign the petition, e-mail John.

Meanwhile, Matt Lewis reports on the movement, linking to Erick Erickson's latest "Not One Red Cent" message at Red State.

UPDATE II: Now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE III: Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent and Eric Zimmerman of The Hill both report the story. Blogged by Dan Riehl of Riehl World View and at Hyscience.

UPDATE IV: John McCormack at the Weekly Standard offers side-by-side comparison of Rubio's speech with video of Crist introducing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Townhall's Greg Hengler is now a Rubio fan, as is Fausta Wertz.

UPDATE V: K-Lo has a new poll on the Florida Senate race, showing Crist with only 49% favorable among Republicans. Compared to that, Rubio's relatively low name-ID is inconsequential. How many Americans had heard of Barack Obama 15 months before the 2008 Iowa caucus?

UPDATE VI: The Rebellion Goes Viral! Meanwhile, Matt Lewis sees the video and says:

To be sure, the NRSC's premature endorsement of Governor Crist would have evoked some negative reaction -- even if his primary opponent were some right-wing nobody . . . or a squishy liberal Republican. But with Rubio, the Republican establishment has essentially pushed aside a young, attractive, conservative, Hispanic, highly-qualified, experienced leader.

BTW, you know who has a man-crush on Charlie Crist? Republican "kingmaker" Fred Malek. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE VII: Dad29 and Sundries Shack applaud the Rubio video, Pundette says, "The last two minutes made me cry," and St. Blogustine says, "It's Payback Time!"