“Charlie Crist” on The Daily Caller

ORLANDO, Fla. – Attention shifted from the Republican presidential candidates at CPAC  and the debate in Florida, Friday, when the state’s U.S. Senate candidates took the main stage to introduce themselves to voters. (more)

Will Charlie Crist be able to weasel his way back onto the national political scene? If a new Sunshine State News poll is any indication, the “second coming of Crist” could be a reality. (more)

Few U.S. senators leave office only to run again in a later election cycle. Former Florida Senator George LeMieux, however, is one of them. (more)

Just how toxic is Charlie Crist? (more)

Former Florida governor Charlie Crist, who once upon a time was expected to one day have his name on a Republican presidential ticket, is now doing personal injury ads for the law firm he joined after losing last year’s Senate race. (more)

TAMPA, Florida — Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has settled a lawsuit filed by Talking Heads singer David Byrne after Crist used one of the group’s songs without permission in a campaign ad last year, both parties confirmed Monday. (more)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, who served for 16 months after he was appointed to finish the term of fellow Republican Mel Martinez, announced Tuesday he will try to win election to the chamber on his own. (more)

1.) Every player in the higher education subsidy debate is a parasite — “When you inject government into an industry, you get some pretty unsavory results.” That’s the conclusion that the Examiner’s Tim Carney arrived at when he dived into the murky debate over federal subsidies for for-profit colleges. Institutions like University of Phoenix and Kaplan have been horning in on the market traditionally held by community colleges. But while claiming to offer a private alternative, for-profits aren’t offering a market-based alternative: They get most of their money from federally provided (or backed) student loans, which they are allowed to keep even if their students drop out. Short-sellers have set their sites on these companies, with one sending out employees to collect signatures from homeless shelter directors complaining about for-profits enrolling homeless people in order to swipe their federal aide money. “In effect,” writes Carney, “the for-profit colleges created a clash between two evils, with one side exploiting the homeless and the other side exploiting the homeless shelters.” (more)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — December’s wave of unusually cold weather has destroyed much of Florida’s green beans and sweet corn, which means shoppers will pay more at the grocery store and see more imports on the shelves. (more)

1.) John Shadegg: House GOP is ‘on probation’ — After 16 years in the House, Rep. John Shadegg is retiring to Arizona. The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward caught up with the son of Barry Goldwater altar ego Stephen Shadegg on his way out the door. Ward asked him, for instance, what makes the Tea Party different from previous conservative waves, such as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 production, in which Shadegg had a walk-on part as a newly elected congressman. “When the Gingrich revolution happened, the Gingrich revolution collapsed,” Shadegg told Ward. “It had betrayed its supporters.” By “it” Shadegg means Republican detractors and other “old bulls” like Tom DeLay, who claimed in 2005 that the government could not cut its spending any further. Now the party is getting a second chance, Shadegg said. “What happens to this class? Does this class get turned by Washington? Does the class change or does this class actually change Washington? I personally think that’s the $64,000 question.” Or, you know, the $1.7 trillion question. (more)

1.) Feds may have to bail out Detroit for a second time — If the federal government decides, in its finite wisdom, that poorly run states and municipalities do not deserve to sink or swim based on the electoral acumen of their residents (or lack thereof), and chooses instead to “bail out” bankrupt members of the American federation, there will be some irony in the decision. In Detroit, two of the city’s public pensions are under investigation for “risky investing” that cost the two funds $480 million in three years. According to the Detroit Free Press, “many of the investments involved secretive middlemen, who pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, or were vetted by controversial investment adviser Adrian Anderson and his firm, North Point Advisors.” Anderson is currently under investigation by the SEC, but has not been charged. In the meantime, “the pensions are paying the legal bills of Anderson and a second adviser who scrutinized failed real estate deals.” Have you heard the one about the burglar who fell through the woman’s skylight and then demanded that she pay for his medical bills? This is sort of like that. (more)

1.) Christ Christie commutes sentence of man convicted for being manly — While Florida Gov. Charlie Crist continues to toss and turn over the thought of pardoning the hell out of Jim Morrison, NJ Gov. Christ Christie has been worried about somebody more low key: Brian Aitken. Aitken was sentenced to seven years in prison this past August because he had two unloaded firearms in the trunk of his car. “Police found unloaded guns that had been purchased legally in Colorado. New Jersey law requires residents who want to transport firearms legally to request a permit from a local law enforcement office and produce a letter stating why it is necessary for them to carry a gun.” Aitken was switching residences and had yet to get the paperwork, ergo he deserved to lose seven years of his life. According to The Daily Caller’s Amanda Carey, Christie “commuted the sentence of Brian Aitken Monday, reducing his sentence from seven years in prison to time already served. According to Christie’s order, he will be released as soon as it’s ‘administratively possible.’” (more)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – This is the end for 40-year-old convictions that left Jim Morrison marked with what today would be considered sex-offender status. Florida’s Clemency Board, egged on by departing Gov. Charlie Crist, pardoned The Doors’ long-dead singer Thursday on indecent exposure and profanity charges stemming from a wild concert. (more)

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is vowing to bring the immigration-related “DREAM Act” to the Senate floor and some Senate Republicans are sounding the alarm bells, highlighting that it would offer amnesty to an estimated 2.1 million illegal aliens. (more)

After 10 months in Walter Reed Army Medical Center, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole is looking forward to his next trip to his native Kansas. (more)

Look closely at the recently-elected 112th Congress. Notice all those bright new faces of “color”? Guess what, most of those faces are Republican. The GOP fielded a large number of ethnic candidates, and, to the surprise of some, a large number won. The new Republican crop includes five Hispanic freshmen, including one woman, Jaime Herrera, who won an open seat in, of all places, Washington. And the two Hispanic Republican candidates in Texas won by defeating Democratic incumbents. (more)

In their postmortems of the 2010 elections, many in the Senate Republican establishment have placed the blame for their inability to regain the majority on Senator Jim DeMint’s principled pre-election endorsements. Once again these establishment elites are wrong. (more)

Tuesday’s election marked a stunning turnaround for the Republican Party, which gained more than 60 new seats in the House and six additional seats in the Senate. As much as any other demographic, it was conservative men who brought the GOP back from two dreary years in the political wilderness. (more)

If the Democrats could have prevented just one of the new GOP senators elected Tuesday from making his way to the Senate, they would have undoubtedly chosen Sen.-elect Marco Rubio of Florida. (more)

It has been called the Great Recession, the worst economic downturn in decades. Yet the current economic situation — while an extremely important component of this election — takes a back seat to one man. These mid-term elections are, and always have been, about President Barack Obama. Why would we expect otherwise? In 2008, Obama was the biggest political personality in a generation. His performance in his first two years in office — and, in particular, whether he has been able to meet the lofty expectations — was always going to be the focus of the 2010 midterm elections. The only folks in the country who apparently did not know this were the occupants of the West Wing. Today Republicans will gain control of the House with a net gain of 60 – 70 seats and narrowly take a 51-seat majority in the Senate in an historic political blowout. (more)