Posted by
Anticontrarian on Monday, November 13, 2006 10:50:49 AM
As the post-mortem of the Republican bloodbath gets underway, there has been a lot of finger-pointing. Of all the questions that should haunt the GOP, one of the biggest is, what if the party had just fielded an electable senatorial candidate in Florida?
Despite the national mood, the 2006 political climate was still very friendly to Florida Republicans. Popular Governer Jeb Bush would have taken Bill Nelson’s seat easily. So might Charlie Crist have done, if Crist had chosen to run for the Senate and left the governership to Tom Gallagher. Gallagher himself would have been a strong opponent for Nelson.
Even Will McBride, the GOP primary runner-up to Katherine Harris, would have given Nelson a tough fight. I think the incumbent Nelson would have beaten the relatively obscure young challenger, but Cuban-American McBride at least would have made the Democrats and Nelson work for the seat. Who knows what indirect effect that might have had in Virginia, Montana, and Missouri, if the Democrats had been forced to spend and campaign in Florida?
What little chance McBride had of beating Harris in the primary was probably reduced to zero by an unfortunate coincidence: His name is almost identical to that of Democrat Bill McBride, the unsuccessful 2002 challenger to Governer Jeb Bush. The two are unrelated.