Crowley Political Report

It is hard to believe that it was only a few months ago that this bald guy showed up on Florida television screens ending his 30-second "hi there" commercials with a friendly - "Let's get to work."

Few knew anything about him.

The Florida media was distracted with the Republican Party fight between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio. The McCollum campaign dismissed him as an irrelevant newcomer.

Only after Rick Scott started spending millions of his own money pushing himself into a double digit lead in the polls did everyone finally take notice.

These are dark times for Republican insiders in Tallahassee. They rallied around Bill McCollum and left themselves little room for making peace if Scott won the nomination.

Now what do they do?  Scott has demonstrated he doesn't need their money. So will they back Democratic Alex Sink instead?

Not likely.

Scott pulled this off but he made a lot of rookie mistakes that could come back to haunt him in the general election.

Scott likes to tell Floridians that he has learned from past business mistakes. It would bode him well to learn from some of the mistakes he made over the past few weeks.