What kind of reviews is Gov. Charlie Crist getting on the heels of his historic decision to restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of felons?
Salon.com's headline proclaims, "Why did a Republican governor just add tens of thousands of Democrats to the voter rolls in Florida?"
The piece is an otherwise glowing review of a step most might have considered political suicide, since it may have handed Democrats more congressional seats and a better shot at the White House in 2008.
Solon cites University of Minnesota sociologist Christopher Uggen's contention that allowing paroled felons back on the voting roles would have re-written modern Florida political history, since a large percentage of felons are African-American and vote Democratic.
"In the past several decades," it states, "at least two Senate races in Florida would have gone to Democrats instead of Republicans had felons had the right to vote. Buddy McKay would have beaten Connie Mack in 1988, and Betty Castor would have beaten Mel Martinez in 2004. And, of course, the 2000 presidential election would have gone to Al Gore."
Meanwhile, columnist Robert Novak has opined that Florida Republicans are miffed with Crist's first 100 days in office.
"Charlie has succeeded in just three months in getting rid of just about everything Jeb Bush accomplished," Novak quotes an unnamed "key Florida Republican" who is apparently upset Crist "has abandoned Bush's conservative reforms, particularly in education."
This writer's unsure of which education reforms this key Republican means since the Florida Supreme Court, then Senate Republicans, had already rebuked Bush's statewide school voucher program last year.
Novak then goes on to suggest Crist apparently isn't that unpopular.
"Crist, the former state attorney general, has been considered a possible candidate for vice president in 2008 in view of Florida's importance to Republican chances of retaining the White House," he writes.