Reading the ‘tea party’ leaves in Florida

While everyone studies the political tea leaves from last week’s primary election in President Obama’s Illinois as the latest sign of Republican vs. Democratic fortunes nationally, take a quick look down at Florida.

Here comes the tea party within the GOP!

A new Rasmussen Reports Poll shows the establishment Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, once a runaway gimme favorite for the Republican Senate nomination this fall, now badly trailing onetime state House Speaker and long-shot nobody Marco Rubio.

Seven months ago, Rubio was behind by 31 points. In December they were tied.

Rasmussen shows the upstart pulling ahead of Crist by 12 points now, 49-37. Crist’s support has been steadily waning, apparently tied to his early support of the $787-billion stimulus program of you-know-who, the Democrat in the White House. In August, Crist’s support was 53%.

The closely watched RealClearPolitics poll average has Rubio now up by 9.7 points.

Besides hugging Obama last year at a rally for the Democrats’ economic stimulus package, jobs have not bounced back in Florida and Republican Crist (whispering now) raised taxes in 2009.

Both Rubio and Crist lead their possible Democratic opponents by double digits.

But the Florida GOP race is being watched closely across the country as a bellwether measure of both Obama’s political toxicity (he’s 0-7 in campaign rallies in recent months) and the grass-roots strength of the “tea party” movement.

Its anti-tax, anti-too-big-government stance helped Scott Brown become the first Republican senator since 1972 from the home of the original Boston Tea Party, which was, gee, way back before even Joe Biden was in the Senate.

andrew.malcolm@ latimes.com

Top of the Ticket, The Times’ blog on national politics, is a blend of commentary, analysis and news (latimes.com/ticket). This is a selection from the last week.