At the Crist Kool-Aid Fountain: Who's Afraid of Marco Rubio?

In what has to be the political understatment of the year, Wall Street Journal columnist Matthew Kaminski writes:

"At first, the local [Florida] press didn't take Marco Rubio's candidacy seriously."

Kaminski goes on to detail the media's gradual conversion, as evidenced by the half-dozen Democratic-leaning newspapers that have endorsed Rubio.

Still, one gets a sense that the press corps still drinks deeply from Charlie Crist's Kool-Aid fountain. One veteran political scribe actually thanked Crist in print last weekend for making such an entertaining Senate race. Funny, we didn't hear NBC's David Gregory offer such bouquets during the last debate. He just did what every Tallahassee reporter should have been doing for the past two years: asking tough questions of the governor.

Crist's final, desperate attempt to keep the spotlight on himself -- his transparent effort to manipulate "my good friend" Kendrick Meek out of the contest -- gave slavish scribes one last thrill. But the guv's sideshow is closing down, and Rubio is heading to a bigger stage.

Read the column here.