Florida Democrats did the country a favor Tuesday.

When they sealed their disgraceful deal in the gubernatorial primary by putting Charlie Crist officially on the ballot, Sunshine State Dems pushed the campaign for governor even further into the national spotlight heading into November’s elections.

And they set up a race between a Republican Rick Scott and newly minted Democrat Crist with as clear a difference between the two candidates as a country could ask for.

As a nationally televised debate Wednesday proved, the Scott-Crist contest is one Republicans can be proud of.

Squaring off on Fox News “Election Headquarters” were Ed Pozzuoli, who chaired Crist’s campaign for governor in 2006, and Democrat strategist David Mercer.

Check it out here:

It’s a pretty fair summation of the campaigns of both men and barring a huge, unexpected event, the arguments were the same voters will hear in different forms for the next two months. Basically, the difference between the two men is the difference between the two parties today.

Rick Scott is the Republican nominee for a second term as governor because he stands for what the party stands for: A state government that understands that a strong economy depends on the private sector to create jobs.

Scott has devoted pretty much every day of his term to creating a business climate conducive the economic growth. For that Florida, has been rewarded with four consecutive years of consistently dropping unemployment and an improving economy – while the national economy has treaded water.

That’s what Rick Scott is, that’s what Republicans are, and God willing it’s what Florida voters will re-elect in November — Democrat carping notwithstanding.

Wasserman Schultz fails to explain why she now supports Charlie Crist

Charlie Crist is the Democratic nominee because he stands for what the party stands for: Rank opportunism, unprincipled pursuit of power, and a shameless – shameless – willingness to say anything, adopt any position, pander to any voting bloc to win the next election.

No honest Democrat would deny that description of Crist (really, find one and ask him), and Crist’s record won’t allow it. Yet the Florida party picked him anyway — after he’s spent less than two years as a card-carrying Democrat.

In Tuesday’s Democratic primary, a party that makes a pretense of liberal principles jettisoned former state Sen. Nan Rich, a woman who’s spent her life fighting for them, in favor of a man who spent most of his life pretending to fight for the very opposite. Crist, after all, used to call himself a Ronald Reagan Republican and once earned the nickname “Chain Gang Charlie” for his anti-crime positions as Florida’s attorney general.

That was the disgraceful deal. Crist dropped his own pretenses to belief in return for the the Democrat nomination. Democrats dropped all pretense to principle in return for a chance to win. For both, the will to power was paramount.

The fact that Democrat primary voters, supposedly the most red-meat faithful to the party’s liberal values, chose Crist over Rich, a lifelong Democrat and former state Senate minority leader, bespeaks a cynicism that would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

And it is dangerous. As conservative writer Rick Wilson pointed out in a dead-on piece on the website Ricochet, the Democrats’ strategy of choosing Crist as their nominee in the Sunshine State is a kind of dress rehearsal for their presidential nominee competition.

The Democratic Party in the Age of Obama is the Democratic Party of Charlie Crist. In 2016, it will be the party of Obama’s successor as party leader – and her name could be Hillary “What Difference Does It Make” Clinton, a woman who makes Crist look like a piker when it comes to rank opportunism, unprincipled pursuit of power and a shameless willingness to pander to any voting bloc to win the next election.

No honest Democrat would deny that either. He’ll defend it, she’ll justify it, they’ll try to explain it away. But the Clinton record won’t let them deny it completely. The whole country knows her too well.

So Florida Democrats did the country a favor by nominating Charlie Crist for governor.

Now, the state can do the country a favor by making sure he loses.

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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