Charlie Crist is at least acting like a man in some trouble. He has seen the teabagger army bearing down on his seat, and he has seen the head of the NRSC bck down to the mob and vow to stay out of primaries even where they’ve endorsed a candidate, like they have with Crist against conservative Marco Rubio in Florida. Today, Crist heard RNC Chairman Michael Steele say that he would “come after” any Republicans who support the President on “core principles,” like the stimulus package.

Crist did support the stimulus. But he knows it’s the weak spot of his primary campaign. So yesterday he compounded the problem by going on CNN and claiming that history didn’t exist:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist tells CNN he never endorsed President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus measure, in what appears to be the latest effort by the Florida Republican to distance himself from the president as he seeks his party’s Senate nomination.

“I didn’t endorse it. I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing,” Crist told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview Wednesday on The Situation Room. “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.”

But Crist did endorse the stimulus. There’s video of it. It’s undeniable. And now he looks completely unprincipled along with siding against the conservative base on a base-motivating issue.

The Club For Growth, a hard-right group, is already up with an ad in Florida hitting Crist for supporting the stimulus. The stimulus is actually not that unpopular, but in the conservative base, it’s a huge problem, so this will undoubtedly hurt Crist’s efforts to win the primary. And he made it worse for himself by trying to deny reality.

UPDATE: Crist has a fundraiser corruption problem, too.