There’s only one way to describe Jeff Greene’s performance Sunday in Florida’s final Democratic Senate primary debate: It felt like, in his haste to prepare for the event, Greene grabbed the talking points for his 1982 Congressional campaign as a Republican instead of his most recent playbook.

In short, there was much for conservatives to like.

Meek, for example, tried to play up his role in passing the financial reform bill, which he said would prevent future meltdown.

“We have corrected the issues of Wall Street,” Meek said. “We passed the financial overhaul, and I think it’s very, very important for us to understand that it will never, ever happen again.”

And Greene called him out on one of the biggest omissions from the bill, which conservatives have widely criticized.

“The financial regulation bill which was passed, he thinks will solve the problem — it didn’t even deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at all,” Greene said. “We’ve already lost $145 billion, and that’s going every day. We could lose almost $500 billion, and there’s no regulation yet of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Greene’s remarks on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were even harsher.

“I’m a student of economics, and I can tell you, Kendrick, the stimulus plan did not work. This last month, unemployment claims went up for the first time in five months. We still have an eleven and a half percent unemployment rate in Florida. So the stimulus plan has not succeeded, because people like you in Congress don’t understand how this stuff works,” Greene said. “It was not targeted at getting hiring going in businesses, it was just a broad-based plan.”

Granted, Greene said consumers can’t bring us out of the current crisis on their own, and his proposal — to pour more money into infrastructure stimulus (as opposed to the previous coked-up-monkey stimulus) — is anathema to debt-conscious conservatives.

But one can’t help cocking an eyebrow at a candidate who states that a large chunk of his party’s legislative success in the past election cycle has proven to be a failure.

Greene’s foreign policy points were equally out of party line. Battle ‘10 reported Greene’s almost-hawkish statements on Iran, and he didn’t tone down the rhetoric Sunday when asked about Israel.

“I think what President Obama did with President Netanyahu, when he snubbed him at the White House, was inappropriate. I think what it does is it empowers anti-Israel hatred and anti-Semitic hatred around the world.” Greene said. “Look, Israel is facing Hezbollah rockets in the north, Hamas rockets in the south, and Egypt which could implode any minute, Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon. I mean, Israel is a lonely place in the Middle East, and I can tell you, they need our support. I will stand by them with undying loyalty.”

Similarly, while Greene supports withdrawal from Afghanistan, his stance is moderated with caution.

“I think the American people have really had it with this,” Greene said. “But I certainly am not going to hold the president to a timetable, if the president or the general has determined that there’s some important reason for our national security to extend the time there. And I want to say one more thing: You know, we’ve gone in there, and a lot of Afghanis have lined up with us. We can’t just pull out and leave them in the hands of the Taliban to get their heads chopped off. So we have to leave in a humane way.”

On the whole, Greene won the debate — at least in this viewer’s eyes — by being concise in his arguments, driving past Democratic talking points and addressing the core of the issue. But success on Sunday may come at his expense on election day.

Meek is taking advantage of Greene’s complicated political past, exemplified by what he told the Los Angeles Times during his Congressional run in 1982:

“What the American people said in 1980,” Greene is quoted as saying, “was, ‘We’re fed up with regulatory red tape and complicated taxation that doesn’t let a small businessman even earn a living or a working man bring home decent pay. We’ve had enough Irans, Polands and Afghanistans. We’re ready to take back our role as the respected leader of the free world.’ Well, after only 15 months, Ronald Reagan is trying to do the job you, I and the American people elected him to do.”

To be sure, Greene has repudiated the Republican party.

“You know, I regret it, I made a mistake, and I became a Republican for a year,” Greene said in a statewide conference call on Aug. 8. “But I can tell you, I realized 27 years ago, that to care about ordinary people, you have to be a Democrat. It’s that simple.”

And in all fairness to the candidate, his stated policies on issues such as social security and health care, which didn’t come up Sunday, put him strongly in liberals’ camp.

Still, after his debate performance, voters probably can’t help but sense a bit of lingering Reagan sentiment, too, especially on foreign policy matters.

While a pro-Israel, anti-Iran Democrat who calls the stimulus a failure may be intriguing to National Review readers, the general Democratic base may simply see Greene’s statements as fulfilling his opponent’s campaign slogan.

Meek says he’s the “real Democrat” in the race. After Sunday, the electorate may agree.