Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered beleaguered Gov. Charlie Crist an anvil this morning while appearing on Fox News Sunday. Asked if he would be revoking his early Crist endorsement in favor of surging Republican candidate Marco Rubio, McConnell didn’t exactly issue a vote of confidence for the struggling senate hopeful.
“Not today.”
The comments come as Crist (R-FL) faces a looming deadline over whether to pull out of the primary and run instead as an independent. It’s a harsher line than McConnell took last week on CNN’s State of the Union, when he said Crist would “lose all Republican support if he were to run as an independent.”
The current TPM Poll Average of the Aug. 24 primary race shows Rubio with 59.1 percent and Crist with 27.9 percent.
TPMDC has been closely following the Crist saga, and McConnell isn’t the first GOPer to sound downright wistful about backing the candidate who is now flailing. Sen. John Cornyn said last month he might have done it differently if he’d known last year when backing Crist that Rubio would overtake him so handily.
McConnell said today his endorsement ” was over a year ago and a lot has happened since then.” He said at the time “he seemed to want our support to get into the race and we were not sure we were even going to be competitive in Florida.” McConnell said he hopes Crist will compete in the primary as a Republican.
“I would be troubled if the governor decided to run as an Independent,” McConnell said. I think that would be a serious problem. And he would certainly not have my support and not have the support of any other Republicans that I know.”
