I'm not a fan of Charlie Crist. I tried to read his autobiography and it was so smarmy and calculating that I couldn't get more than a hundred pages into it. I'm not happy that Crist's a Democrat now, and I wish he wasn't running for public office. But I do think Crist was telling the truth when he said this, about why he left the Republican Party:

“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there,” Crist said on Fusion’s “America with Jorge Ramos.” “I was a Republican, and I saw the activists and what they were doing; it was intolerable to me.”

And I have a hard time believing that Marco Rubio is telling the truth when he says this:

“I think it’s absurd and, quite frankly, it’s barely worthy of any sort of response, but because he’s running for governor of my state, I guess I need to say what I said,” Rubio said... Rubio also pushed back against Crist’s claims about racism within the party — at least from Rubio’s own campaign.

“I’ve never met a single Republican activist involved in my campaign that has ever, in my opinion, ever been motivated by race to state their objections,” Rubio said.

I do think Republicans would be working hard against any Democratic president. But I also think history will show the Republicans behaved in a dishonorable, and, yes, racist, manner in handling President Obama. There have been so many instances of casual (and blatant) racism dropped by Republicans over the last decade since Obama became a nationally recognized figure that I find it hard to believe Rubio has not witnessed one of them. Maybe he thinks he's protecting himself by cautiously couching his statement to his own campaign, but I also think Rubio must be fooling himself to think that every volunteer on his campaign has behaved in a completely honorable manner when it comes to President Obama's race. I think that's downright impossible.