Gov. Charlie Crist moved Friday to clarify a misstatement he said he made in a television interview Friday, when Crist said he would have voted for the federal health care law that was approved earlier this year by Congress.
Crist, who said as the bill was being approved in March that he was opposed to it, said his opinion of the bill hadn’t changed; he simply misspoke. “I would have voted for it, but I think it could be done better,” Crist said when asked how he would have voted if he was in the Senate when health care was being debated. What he meant to say was the bill should be repealed, Crist said, and replaced with a smaller law that maintains some popular parts of the plan, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance in 26 and forbidding patients from being denied pre-existing conditions.
But Crist’s Democratic and Republican opponents in the U.S. Senate race – he is running as an independent – both pounced on the interview Friday, accusing Crist of flip-flopping.
“In case you missed it, Charlie Crist took his fifth position on President Obama’s massive health spending bill in as many months, now claiming that he ‘would have voted for’ ObamaCare,” the Republican Party of Florida, which is backing Marco Rubio, said in a statement. “As you’ll remember just last month, Crist issued a statement saying ‘I would have voted against the bill.’”
Meek’s campaign was equally unforgiving, saying Crist had “political amnesia.”
“From day to day, hour to hour, his grasp on the truth has escaped him,” Meek spokesman Adam Sharon said in an E-mail. “Gov. Crist isn’t just playing politics with this critical issue which impacts everyday people — he is flat-out distorting history that’s not even months old.”
Crist tried to remain above the fray.
“This debate must not be about political posturing; it must be about protecting the people of Florida and America, and I intend to do that hard work when I get to the United States Senate,” he said.
The News Service of Florida
