A Quinnipiac poll shows conservative Marco Rubio making a race of it in Florida against Governor Charlie Crist in their Republican Senate primary. This could explain why Crist has moved sharply to the right in recent days.

Gov. Charlie Crist’s lead over former state house speaker Marco Rubio in the 2010 Republican U.S. Senate primary has been cut in half from 55 – 26 percent to 50 – 35 percent, but the Governor tops the leading Democrat, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, 51 – 31 percent among all voters, while Rubio trails Meek 36 – 33 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

“Gov. Charlie Crist’s lead, which had been 29 points August 19, has come back down to earth. His margin is still formidable, but obviously Marco Rubio’s focus on convincing Republican conservatives that he, not Crist, is their kind of guy is bearing fruit,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“Among Republicans, 44 percent view Rubio favorably, 3 percent unfavorably, up from 24 – 6 percent August 19. But fully half don’t know enough about him to have an opinion. Filling in that blank slate for that half of GOP voters – positively by Rubio and negatively by Crist – will decide the nomination.

Dave Weigel notes that conservatives like Rubio and California’s Chuck DeVore are both dark horse conservative candidates to watch going against much higher-profile and better-funded candidates in Republican primaries. However, unlike DeVore, who’s nearly broke, Rubio has been raising money of late, and has a much better shot to pull the upset.

Overall, this shows how the teabagger hard-right base is really driving the conversation in the Republican Party. John Boehner took the unusual step today in a USA Today op-ed to blame both parties for the spiraling budget deficit, probably because the base has such antipathy for Congressional Republicans. This conservative/nutball conservative split may have cost Republicans an election in NY-23, where a Conservative Party candidate is splitting the base and paving the way for a Democrat to win up there for the first time in over a century. More and more, Republicans are rewarded by their base for going way over to the right, which is the dynamic playing out in Florida and all over the country.

…on a similar theme, here’s aimai:

This is starting to look like a repeat of the early chapters of Thomas Franks’ What’s the Matter With Kansas. That’s the part where the rank and file Conservatives–the secretaries and the holy rollers–stopped taking marching orders from the upper class, corporatist, Republicans and took over the party from underneath. That was good for the Republican Party for a while since it gave them an energized base. But since party identification has fallen to its lowest level ever, and they are splitting off between social conservatives and small government conservatives its not clear that this will still be a winning strategy nationally.