Conservatives don’t take to proven liars all that well. As Beth Reinhard wrote last Saturday in The Miami Herald: 'The only way things could get worse [for Crist] is if Gennifer Flowers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the guy who videotaped former Virginia Sen. George Allen making an ethnic slur all showed up at his doorstep in Tallahassee.'

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Florida Governor Charlie Crist is reportedly a hale fellow, well met.  Personally we wouldn’t know, because conversations with career politicians rank right below listening to a convicted criminal explaining innocence, in terms of usefulness.

In fact, talking, untruthfully, is getting Crist into considerable trouble in his bid to become Florida’s next U.S. Senator.

The landscape looked a lot different when the former state Attorney General and one-term Governor announced for the Senate last May.  Then, according to The Miami Herald, it took only a record 14 minutes for the national Republican Party to endorse him over former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Crist has a formidable organization and the ability to raise large sums of campaign money.  The organization proved itself when Crist endorsed John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee and took him to win the Florida Republican primary, which ultimately enabled, in the eyes of many political observers, the McCain nomination, to the consternation of many conservatives.

Conservatives were no more pleased when the national party attempted to big foot the senatorial primary, trying to build a stable of bankable candidates, mostly hewing to the center, around the country.

And that was before Marco Rubio, although largely unknown throughout the state, proved himself to be a tireless, likable, articulate conservative with a compelling personal story, serving as an early and growing stimulus, if you will, to a now-national grassroots conservative rebellion against the top-down, “Democrat Lite” movement in a dispirited party.

It was of another stimulus that Governor Crist did speak, too much, too prominently, too favorably when the popularity of President Obama was sky high, and the President was pushing his $787 billion stimulus plan across the country. 

Crist endorsed the stimulus, by any conventional meaning, or even picky parsing, of the word, campaigning with Obama in Florida for it, supporting it nationally on television and lobbying Florida legislators for it on his own.

Suffice it to say that as the stimulus stimulated little other than government fabrications regarding its success, with many of its imprudent expenditures of public money slithering out and about, and President Obama veered hard to the left, Governor Crist sought to distance himself from the President and his stimulus.

First, at least in this short-term chronology, came the small lie, but lie it was.  When, in October, President Obama made a trip to Florida, primarily to visit troops in Jacksonville, the Governor said he didn’t know the President was in the state, and he took no chopper to join him.  Even college political science professors know such ignorance is not plausible.

Presidents just don’t visit a state without prior notice to the Governor, except in the rarest of circumstances, none on record that we can identify, so the Governor’s excuse had zero credibility from the get-go, and that was before the St. Petersburg Times obtained e-mails verifying White House notification to the Governor’s office of the trip.

Then came the biggie.  On November 4, Crist told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, regarding the Obama stimulus, “I didn’t endorse it.  I – you know, I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing.  But I understood that it was going to pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians.”

With both lies (and some other fooling with facts, like claiming credit for Florida’s largest tax cut ever), Crist has a singular problem – the aforementioned St. Petersburg Times.  While decidedly liberal (what few newspapers aren’t?), the Times has one of the most aggressive reporting records in the country, and it has virtually patented a regular feature called PolitiFact, with its hokey but potent “Truth-O-Meter.”

PolitiFact’s take can get debatable at the edges, but, by and large, it does a credible job of deconstructing political rhetoric down to facts, nailing particularly offensive targets to trees for the buzzards to pick. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its 2008 election coverage. It gave Crist’s “I didn’t endorse stimulus” claim its worst, if far too cute, “Pants on Fire” rating (and his tax claim a “false”).

Why Crist chose to lie about the stimulus and President Obama’s visit, both easily and quickly discredited, is puzzling.  He could have mealy-mouthed both with far less fallout.  That his Communications Director quit or got thrown under the bus just yesterday is indicative of that fallout.

There’s no question that Crist’s job approval is at its lowest point after almost three years in office, and Florida is among 10 states facing fiscal calamity according to a new national study. While still commanding an almost two-to-one lead in the Senate race (polling done before the latest controversies broke), Crist feels the hot breath of Marco Rubio closing the gap, plus an unruly electorate, with almost 10 months to go until Florida’s August primary.

Internal campaign polls, almost never publicly revealed, generally have an infinitely better understanding of election dynamics than public polls.  That’s their function.  In that light, it is instructive to note that Crist began running radio ads in October, very early this far out, and the ads specifically try to bolster his conservative credentials.

Conservatives don’t take to proven liars all that well.

As Beth Reinhard wrote last Saturday in The Miami Herald:  “The only way things could get worse [for Crist] is if Gennifer Flowers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the guy who videotaped former Virginia Sen. George Allen making an ethnic slur all showed up at his doorstep in Tallahassee.”