Scorched Earth Campaign

And this is why the Dems backing Charlie Crist's independent bid is a stupid, stupid idea.

Gov. Charlie Crist personally signed off on his former Republican Party chairman's confidential fundraising role with the state party, according to Jim Greer's attorney, whose allegation contradicts the governor's statement that he "didn't know anything" about the deal now part of a criminal investigation.

State investigators say Greer and the party's former executive director, Delmar W. Johnson III, secretly set up a shell company called Victory Strategies to divert party money and enrich themselves. Greer was charged Wednesday with fraud and money laundering.

But Greer's attorney, Damon Chase, said Saturday that the deal giving them a 10 percent cut of party donations was legal. What's more, Chase said Crist's former right-hand man, now U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, first proposed the idea that they earn a fundraising commission to save the party money and replace the $30,000-a-month contract with fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke.

"You guys work hard. You deserve it," Chase said Greer was told by the governor as they played pool in February 2009 at a Palm Beach golf tournament.

Crist, an independent candidate for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat, said Saturday that he didn't know about Victory Strategies until after Greer resigned in January. He said he knew Greer wanted to replace O'Rourke with Johnson, but was unaware that they set up a separate company and that Greer had a stake in it.

"Jim thought a change would be a good idea, and I said, 'Whatever you think needs to be done, and if you need to bring in Delmar, that's fine,' " Crist said.

How could he not have known about Victory Strategies as the head of the party? "I'm the guy in charge of the state," said Crist, who was in Pensacola on Saturday responding to the Gulf Coast oil spill. "I've got a state to run, and that's my focus."

If what Jim Greer is saying is true, then the GOP machine in Florida is about to get dismantled with dynamite and sledgehammers.  Crist may be in real trouble here.  The smart play here for the Dems is to back Kendrick Meek big time and go on the attack, saying the entire Republican apparatus in Florida is corrupt as hell (and that is looking more and more like the truth daily).  Jim Greer is flailing around in his political death throes and he's knocking out the supports underneath both Crist and Rubio.  Clearly he's not going down alone.

Worst case scenario is Rubio wins because Meek doesn't have the resources to show why Crist's backers should vote for him...because the Dems were too busy sinking those dollars into Crist's campaign.  This has all the makings of a Martha Coakley screw-up all over again unless somebody in the White House gets the fact that it doesn't matter what kind of deals Crist cut to caucus with the Dems in the Senate if Marco Rubio wins the election.

Wake up, guys.  Charlie Crist is looking worse every day here.