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Infighting within the state GOP has weakened the party so badly that it is verging on irrelevant, a former partychairman says — despite its overwhelming dominance in the legislature and its decade-long lock on the governor’soffice.Other Republican leaders charge that current party Chairman Jim Greer and, by default, Gov. Charlie Crist are out of sync with what grass-roots Republicans want.“It would be hard to imagine us being any more impotent than we appear to be right at this point,” said former stateRepublican Chairman Tom Slade, who headed the party from 1993 to 1999. That was a period when the GOP took over the state House and Senate and sent Jeb Bush to the governor’s mansion.Greer flexed his political muscles this year when he tried to use a parliamentary procedure to hamper former stateHouse Speaker Marco Rubio’s candidacy to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez. Crist had jumped into the Senaterace in May, garnering Greer’s support immediately.That transformed what had been a whisper campaign against Greer into public criticism from county leaders and othersthroughout the state, who said the chairman had gone too far.Rubio later characterized the Senate GOP primary as a battle for the “heart and soul” of the Republican Party inFlorida.But Greer, hand-picked by Crist, says the party is doing just fine and blames reports of its demise on a few disgruntledbut vocal outliers.“I don’t think that the party has anywhere near the problems that some are promoting in the state. In fact, I think thisparty in Florida is very strong and I see it each and every day,” Greer said in a telephone interview.Indeed, the GOP holds nearly two-thirds of the seats in both the state House and Senate, along with two of the threeCabinet posts, making the rival Democrats a bare afterthought in almost all state-level decisions. That would appear tomake any threat to continued Republican control remote at best.And for all the grousing by some in hus party, Crist won 64 percent of the Republican gubernatorial primary vote justthree years ago, when he defeated a candidate who had openly appealed to GOP conservatives.Still, some in the party are restless. And Rubio’s appeal to conservatives may be based less on his principles of lowertaxes, opposition to gay marriage and other core GOP ideals and more on a growing dissatisfaction among die-hardRepublicans with the governor’s performance since taking office in 2007.Crist alienated many in his party with a string of actions that separated him from even the most moderate Republicanson the national stage. He was an outspoken cheerleader for President Obama’s stimulus package, which caused someparty insiders to call for a censure.He failed to stack the Florida Supreme Court with a conservative tilt although he had the ability to do so, with fourappointments during the first half of his term.And, to many, he’s leaving the party high and dry by abandoning his office after the first term and putting thegovernor’s office into play when Republicans thought they had the seat locked up until 2015.Add to that Greer’s attempt to implement “Rule 11” to thwart Rubio’s candidacy — a procedure employed to dismisscandidates that don’t have a chance of actually winning a race — and some county leaders are hopping mad.“The disconnect between our party leadership and our grass roots is the same disconnect between our party leadershipand the country,” said Palm Beach County Republican Party Chairman Sid Dinerstein. “The country favors termlimits, balanced budgets, English as the official language, no amnesty and tax cuts. And the leadership doesn’t.”Greer is staying far away from Orlando this weekend, where a party committee will hear a handful of grievances filed
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