Charlie Crist is being embarrassed in the Florida Senate primary. He now trails by 30-some points. Not surprisingly, his money is drying up. He’s raised less than a third of what Marco Rubio hauled in.

So naturally he’s going negative with a sort of creepy ad that suggests there is something we don’t know about Marco Rubio. I suppose Crist figures he’s got nothing to lose and can’t get the base any angrier at him. It vaguely reminds me of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary — frustrated at the base’s sweetheart, flailing around and going negative in a last ditch effort to make the voters fall out of love with the party’s newest rock star. It didn’t work then either. Crist is, after all, still governor and at some point will need to decide if it’s worthwhile to keep this up, further erode his base of support, and go down as a spoilsport.

Rubio probably doesn’t suffer from having an active primary going on. (Likewise, the prolonged 2008 Democratic primary energized the Democratic base, and Clinton’s negative attack ads never were successfully used against Obama in the general election.) For now, Rubio remains the favorite of the conservative base — and the belated object of affection of party insiders, who learned with some embarrassment that Crist was not the sure-thing candidate they imagined he’d be.