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Chameleon Charlie

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: November 7, 2009

We've given Gov. Charlie Crist grief for pledging during the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary that he would govern along the conservative lines of the man he was seeking to replace, Jeb Bush, and then lurching to the left after he was elected. His enthusiastic backing of the Legislature's decision to have the state, in effect, take over the property insurance industry in Florida was one example of un-Jeb-ish behavior. Another was the governor's backing of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus program. The media has been referring to that support for months without a peep of protest from Crist - until Wednesday.

On the day after Democrat-leaning Virginia and New Jersey elected Republican governors, Crist denied supporting the president's stimulus bill. Now that he is in a U.S Senate primary battle with the more conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, Crist apparently is trying to burnish his own conservative credentials.

As the AP was rude enough to report Wednesday, however, "Crist appeared with President Barack Obama in February to support the (stimulus) bill, asked Florida members of Congress to vote for it and previously told The Associated Press that he would have voted for it if he had been in the Senate."

Oops.

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