Bill Buckley used to tell a funny story about a heroic attempt to survive a faux pas. A young lieutenant is obliged to attend a social event in a prominent hotel with a general. In the lobby, in an attempt to make conversation, the lieutenant says, “Look there, that’s the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen,” nodding toward two women in conversation on the other side of the lobby.

“That’s my wife,” the general said. In an attempt to recover, the lieutenant says, “Oh, I meant the young woman with her.” The general says, “That’s my daughter.”

The lieutenant, who knows he’s in deep yogurt now, thinks desperately for a second, finally smiles, looks directly at the general and says, “I never said it.”

Charlie Crist, Florida’s RINO governor who badly wants to be a RINO U.S. Senator from Florida, is trying to run this same revisionist scam. He claimed on CNN Wednesday that he never supported President Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” slush fund, which he clearly did, on tape, over and over. He’s caught so much flak from conservatives for this, and for other un-conservatives acts, that in sheer desperation he’s trying to get Florida voters to believe he “never said it.”

On February 10, when it appeared the Democrats would be able to push through a $787 billion federal spending bill in the name of stimulating the economy, but before it was finally adopted, Crist traveled to Ft. Myers to appear on the same stage with President Obama who was in Florida to whoop up his budget-busting slush fund. On that day and that stage, Crist not only embraced Obama, but he enthusiastically embraced the idea of the federal government spending nearly a trillion dollars the government doesn’t have on the general notion that somehow this would put the ailing economy right.

Here’s what he said, while the crowd, enchanted by Obama’s presence, repeated fortissimo, “Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!”

Crist: “We’ve had to cut about $7 billion the past two years and we haven’t raised taxes and we’re still in balance. But to be candid, it’s getting harder every day. It’s getting harder every day and we know that it’s important that we pass this stimulus package. It is important that we do so to help education, to help our infrastructure, and to help health care for those who need it the most — the most vulnerable among us. And let me finish by saying, Mr. President, we need to do it in a bipartisan way. This issue is about helping our country. This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America and reigniting our economy.”

A few days later Crist appeared on Chris Matthews’ Hardball, and in answer to Mathews’ question, “Why are you aboard the Obama bailout bandwagon?” Crist said: ” Well, I call it a stimulus for the economy to try to help the people in my state. It’s really that simple, Chris.” Asked by Matthews why he was supporting the stimulus when so many in his party weren’t, Crist said: “Because Florida needs it, frankly. This would mean about $12.2 billion for Florida. It would help us in the areas of education, health care, infrastructure, and that’s where we need the help.”

Over the next short while, Crist made similar comments, available on the Internet for anyone who wants to see and hear them, on CBS, NBC, and Bloomberg. These statements are as clear as spring water. Please adopt President Obama’s “stimulus” plan because it’s good policy and will be good for the country, Crist is saying.

Even the White House thinks Crist was on the stimulus team last February. Asked at Thursday’s White House press briefing whether Crist endorsed the stimulus plan in his joint appearance with Obama, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “I would say yes yes.” He said Crist’s unambiguous words speak for themselves.

“I think he was very supportive of the legislation and supportive of the benefits that it would have and has had for the state of Florida in seeing positive economic growth,” Gibbs said.

Well, that was then, when Obama’s approval ratings were at about 110 percent. This is now, when Obama and his policies are less popular. And Crist has been chastened by conservatives — a major part of the Republican base he needs if he is to have any hope of defeating conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in next August’s Republican Senate primary — for supporting a bill which clearly is stimulating the living hell out of the national debt but little else.

Now here’s an exchange between Crist and Wolf Blitzer on CNN Wednesday:

Blitzer: Let me interrupt for a second, governor. Do you have any regrets about endorsing the economic stimulus package?

Crist: Well, I didn’t endorse it. I — you know, I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing. But I understood that it was going to pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians.

Even for Charlie Crist, who on the campaign trail maintains only the most informal relationship with truth, this in an audacious switcheroo. This is beyond a John Kerry moment. This isn’t just, “I was for it until I was against it.” This is, “I never said it.”

Any reasonable person reading and hearing Crist’s remarks in February would not conclude that Crist just wanted to assure that his state got as much as possible from a program that was already a fact, a reasonable position, but that he thought it was a good idea to put almost a trillion dollars we don’t have into a slush fund and spend it haphazardly on things Obama and his administration fancied. Crist did endorse the stimulus, and his claim that he didn’t requires a Joe Wilson, or others of his directness, to parse.

Crist’s desperation is understandable. In the spring Crist was more than 30 points ahead of Rubio in the polls and was the prohibitive favorite to win the primary next August. Since then the conservative Rubio has cut Crist’s lead in half, has closed the gap a bit in fund-raising, and is making a race out of what was once thought to be a Crist cake-walk. Rubio has the mo.

This reversal of fortune has caused Crist to say some peculiar things, including trying to claim he’s a fiscal conservative on the basis that he had cut $7 billion out of the Florida budget over the past two years. The truth is the Florida Legislature was obliged to cut the money because the Florida constitution mandates a balanced budget and the bad economy has severely reduced Florida’s incoming revenue. Crist had little or nothing to do with the cuts; in fact he vetoed millions of dollars of them. Much of the Florida media called him on this one.

Crist hasn’t just shaded the truth as in his budget-cutting claims, but he’s backing off of previous liberal positions he’s taken, including such as his call for carbon cap and trade. In fact, Crist is backing off of so many of his previous dodgy positions that he’s had to have one of those back-up beeper signals installed on his campaign car.

We don’t know if the socially maladroit lieutenant above ever made captain. But we can conclude that Crist’s chances of becoming a U.S. Senator will diminish if he makes many more of these fanciful attempts to redefine himself. If he keeps coming up with these laughers, at some point not only will Crist’s lack of a core philosophy be a campaign issue, but also his apparent lack of character.

So here’s some free advice for Crist from a sage old political consultant whose name I’ve forgotten: “Tell the truth — voters like it, and it’s easier to remember.”

When the Gipper left office in January of 1989, the Republican establishment remembered these vital lessons. For about an hour and a half.

George H.W. Bush ran in 1988 on a pledge to be Reagan III. But he soon reverted to his own form. We all remember what then happened to “Read my lips, no new taxes.” And the Federal Register under George the First soon regained the elephantine heft it sported before Reagan put the brakes on federal regulation. Since then Republican poobahs and money-men have supported countless RINOs (often against solid conservative candidates), careerists with no philosophy or soul, and other me-toos who gave us a Republican president and a Republican Congress better at spending than even the Democrats and no detectable progress on any conservative social issue. This was the lot that was routed in ’06 and again in ’08.

Democrats decry to every open mike they can find how conservative the Republican Party has become. If only it were so.

Considering recent history, it should come as no surprise that with what promises to become an exciting 2010 Senate primary race shaping up in Florida between a substance-free, moderate-to-liberal governor and a conservative former speaker of the Florida House, the Republican establishment has lined up to give the liberal governor a big, wet tongue kiss, and has not so subtly tried to elbow the conservative aside. These guys clearly miss Arlen Specter already, and are searching for his replacement.

They think they’ve found him in moderate-to-liberal Florida governor, Charlie Crist, who campaigned in his own state for our rookie president’s bank-busting goodie package, aka the stimulus bill. Crist has tried to get the Florida Legislature to adopt a carbon cap and trade program and to force Florida utilities into generating an unreasonable percentage of their electricity using “renewable fuels,” the kind that excite environmentalists’ erogenous zones but exist in but trifling amounts and are bloody expensive. He also wants California-like auto emissions standards that would cost a packet but provide a negligible improvement in Florida’s air.

You’ll never hear an encouraging word from Crist on any conservative social issue. He’s pro-abortion and thinks marriage-like legal arrangements between homosexuals are fine. He recently put a liberal Democrat on the Florida Supreme Court.

In Crist’s speeches, conservatives will wait in vain to hear any of their principles promoted. What they hear are endless lullabies about “bipartisanship,” “diversity,” and other warm-sounding, non-sequiturs from the Democratic hymn book. These are just the most actionable of Crist’s sins against conservative principles.

No matter. Less than an hour after Crist threw his hat in the ring last week, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Republican Senatorial Campaign head John Cornyn of Texas both endorsed him. In Florida, Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer endorsed Crist. These quick endorsements came in spite of the fact that national Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele has said Republicans who’ve supported the president’s stimulus plan shouldn’t themselves be supported, and in spite of the fact that there’s another very solid Republican candidate in the Florida race. Steele said Sunday that in spite of McConnell’s and Cornyn’s premature coronation of Crist, the RNC would stay out of the Florida race until after the primary.

The “other guy” clueless Republican leaders would like to ignore is Cuban-American attorney Marco Rubio of Miami. In eight years in the Florida House he compiled a conservative voting record and has been a frequent speaker across the state on issues such as holding the line on taxes, limited government, and the importance of the family. He hit these themes and others Friday afternoon at a meet-and-greet at Crabby Bill’s seafood restaurant in Tampa.

“We’re scheduled for the largest deficit in the history of the world,” Rubio said of the stimulus package Crist fancies. Rubio was critical of the recent automaker bailouts, saying, “The jobs will be gone and we’ll still owe the money. Washington should just get out of the way.” On Obama-Care, “We shouldn’t put the government between patients and their doctors, or do anything to increase costs. There are free market solutions to health care.”

Rubio was critical of politics by poll and focus group, and critical of the Republican Party’s recent melancholy record on limited government and spending.

“America hasn’t solved a major problem in 20 years. That’s because politics now isn’t about solving problems, it’s about getting elected. Leadership and popularity are not the same thing.”

Rubio not only has a message, but he’s enthusiastic and deft in putting that message across. He gives every appearance of a conviction politician who knows what he wants to accomplish in office. His remarks went over well with the 120 or so who gathered during working hours to hear the candidate the McConnells and Greers of the world would as soon Republicans ignore. Many on hand were members of Central Florida Republican executive committees where there is considerable resentment about Greer’s attempt to announce an end to the Republican senatorial race before it starts.

In recent Republican executive committee meetings in Hillsborough (Tampa), Pinellas (St. Petersburg-Clearwater), and nearby Pasco and Hernando counties, Rubio’s campaign has generated interest, including lots of folks volunteering to volunteer. The Hillsborough committee passed a resolution objecting to Greer’s attempts to get the state party behind Crist. There have been similar rumblings in Republican groups across the state.

The Republican muftis doubtless like Crist because he has the appearance of a winner. After two years in office Crist still has approval ratings in the sixties. He’s about as popular among Democrats and independents as among Republicans, largely because he often sounds like a Democrat. This is the reason Crist gets better press treatment than most Republicans. If the election were next week, Charlie would likely beat Rubio and any of the Democrats likely to seek that party’s nomination. Of course, the race isn’t next week.

Charlie is a charming fellow who knows how to work a room, and has floated from one Florida office to another on an engaging smile, a few populist bromides, a great tan, and the ability to convince voters he has their best interests at heart and knows how to make their lives better. He is in fact empty political calories. He’s accomplished next to nothing in the many Florida offices he’s held, none of them for long before he was seeking the next office. The only thing he’s worked hard at, or seems really committed to, is keeping himself in office.

But populists often fall quickly when voters finally discover there’s no there, there. This may happen with Charlie. Florida has serious problems about which Crist has done little in his two years as governor. So the muftis’ sure thing of today could be problematic a year from now. And a candidate with real conservative principles could look pretty appealing in a state that has traditionally supported conservative candidates, the deliriums of the recent presidential race notwithstanding.

During the war Dwight Eisenhower said that De Gaulle, supposedly on the same team, caused him more trouble than Mussolini did. Right now Republican “leaders” are causing Rubio more trouble than the Democrats. Looking at his record through the post-war years, le Grand Charlie never did figure out what team he was on. Perhaps Jim Greer still can.

Listen up Jim, this isn’t complicated. The sequence goes in this wise: primary first — then close behind a candidate. Not the other way around.