Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) wants to celebrate “the hug” in style. Tomorrow, he will mark the one-year anniversary of Gov. Charlie Crist (R., Fla.) embracing President Obama and last year’s stimulus bill with a “money bomb” for Marco Rubio, Crist’s opponent in Florida’s GOP Senate primary. “For a Republican governor to make such a visible display of support for the stimulus early on was a pretty clear departure from where the GOP needs to be,” DeMint tells National Review Online. “Helping Marco win the most exciting race in the country isn’t just about electing a Florida senator, but recasting the Republican party and moving it away from politicians who pervert the process by thinking their job is to collect money for their states and districts.”
DeMint’s PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, hopes to raise $100,000 in 24 hours for Rubio, who, according to recent polls, leads Crist by nearly ten percentage points. The cash is needed: Although he is ahead in the polls, Rubio lags behind Crist in cash on hand by nearly $5 million.
DeMint says his work against Crist, who is endorsed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “isn’t about hurting my party, but helping it.” Rubio, he adds, “isn’t a radical right-winger, but a candidate devoted to our country’s founding principles and fiscal responsibility.”
“I’m not looking to support far-right-wing radical candidates,” DeMint says. “I, and tens of millions of Americans, want to elect common-sense conservatives. I know that a common-sense conservative can win in every state in the country. Just look at Scott Brown in Massachusetts. His positions were hardly radical, and he presented them in a winsome manner. From Marco in Florida to Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Chuck DeVore in California, we see smart conservative candidates, not radicals, surging.”
“The mainstream media will radicalize anyone who is against Obama’s agenda,” DeMint says. “They won’t call out the Democrats or the Obama agenda for directing us toward European-style socialism.”
The tea-party movement, DeMint adds, “is a direct consequence of the Obama agenda” and a “cross section of Americans, from Republicans and Democrats to the unaffiliated.” The tea party, he says, “is just the tip of a movement that’s growing across America. Millions of Americans realize that now is the time we have to change what’s happening in Washington to avoid a fiscal collapse. What I’m doing with my PAC, for Marco and others, is making sure that we have great candidates in every state.”
DeMint’s work may already be paying off. On Monday, Rubio received the endorsement of Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.), chairman of the House GOP Conference. Other prominent Republicans, such as Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, have also endorsed Rubio.