John McCain snagged the biggest endorsement in Florida (and aside from Nancy Reagan, arguably the biggest in the race as a whole) tonight as Charlie Crist have him the nod, and a hug too boot. Crist has a 65 percent approval rating and this will help, if nothing else, by monopolizing local media coverage for the last day or so of the race. Why did Crist wait so long? He might have preferred another candidate, but waited to see if he might play a decisive role. Not to be overlooked: McCain endorsed Crist in his primary and certainly had a favor to call in. (In the category of gathering in the GOP establishment, Howard Baker who had backed Fred Thompson, also endorsed McCain today. No word yet on the popular, moderate Tennessee Senator Bob Corker.)
Until the Crist news broke, most of the day was spent in a heated argument between McCain and Mitt Romney. McCain pointed to an interview Romney gave earlier in the year on Good Morning America in which he suggested that “the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.”
McCain contends this shows that Romney supported a secret deadline for withdrawal. Romney vehemently denied this and pointed to a number of his statements supportive of the surge and Bush’s policy. McCain shot back and later added statements from Lawrence Eagleburger and James Woolsey attacking Romney’s resoluteness.
Who’s right and does it matter? I think the best that can be said for McCain is that Romney played his cards very close to his vest until late last fall on the surge. You may recall the New Hampshire debate in which Romney would only say that the surge “apparently” was working. McCain pounced at the time and this left some conservatives speculating that Romney was prepared to distance himself from Bush. But the point of McCain’s attack today, I suspect, was to highlight in flashier terms the argument McCain has been trying to make for some time: Romney lacks national security experience, never spoke up about the Rumsfeld policy’s failings and didn’t advocate for the surge before it became obvious it was succeeding. If that is the discussion for the next couple of days, and not the two candidates’ relative economic expertise, that benefits McCain. On the merits of this particular fight, the usually supportive media are a skeptical of McCain’s charge.
