The Corner

Marco Solo

Will Charlie Crist quit the GOP and run for the Senate as an independent?

Crist’s camp has steadfastly denied it will go the independent route, but Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) was saying the same thing mere days before he made the switch.

An independent run is easily the most tempting scenario for political junkies, and polls show Crist would stand a better chance of winning in a three-way race with Marco Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) than he would of winning the GOP primary. He’s got to know that he will probably never win the presidency as a Republican, so now is as good a time as any to reevaluate.

If he does want to go down that road, he must decide by April 30. He can still take the $7.6 million he has banked and use it on an independent bid, so he would have a fighting chance without a party infrastructure behind him.

John J. Miller, the national correspondent for National Review and host of its Great Books podcast, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.
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