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For a few weeks now, it has been looking increasingly likely that Florida governor Charlie Crist will pull out of the Republican Senate primary to run as an independent. This makes sense, because polls show him getting creamed by right-wing challenger and darling of the Tea Partiers, Marco Rubio in the primary, but he might actually win a three-way election.

A poll released Thursday suggests Gov. Charlie Crist’s political career is not over — if he abandons his Republican bid for the U.S. Senate and runs as an independent.

Former House Speaker Marco Rubio has soared 23 points ahead of Crist in a Republican matchup, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. But Crist keeps his head above water as an independent candidate against Rubio as the GOP nominee and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami as the Democratic standard bearer.

The governor would get 32 percent of the vote, compared to Rubio’s 30 percent and Meek’s 24 percent, the survey found.

The politically moderate governor has repeatedly dismissed the idea of leaving the Republican Party. But his bleak performance in the polls, combined with increasing hostility from members of his own party, may leave him with little choice.

So the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has offered him some advice on the proper political etiquette to be followed in the peculiar circumstances Crist finds himself in:

The top political strategist for Senate Republicans urged key GOP consultants Monday to persuade Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to forgo an independent bid for Senate if he withdraws from the Republican primary, CNN has learned.

Rob Jesmer, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an e-mail to national political operatives just before noon in which he also predicted that Crist will decide not to compete in the GOP primary against former state House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“We believe there is zero chance Governor Crist continues running in the Republican primary,” Jesmer wrote in the e-mail provided to CNN by a Republican source on the condition of anonymity. “It [is] our view that if Governor Crist believes he cannot win a primary then the proper course of action is he drop out of the race and wait for another day.”

In case you’re confused, Crist is still the official candidate of the Republican Party establishment. He is still the one endorsed by the NRSC. But Republican politics isn’t what it used to be; which is why “Jesmer emphasized in his note that the Senate Republican political arm is ready to stand behind Rubio’s candidacy.” Or why John Cornyn, chairman of the NRSC, has been making similar threats :

Cornyn said that Crist would be a “man without a party” if he decided to mount a three-way race against Rubio and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek, who is pursuing his party’s nomination in the state.

“And I think he’s got other potential and aspirations, so I think from that standpoint, it would be a bad decision,” Cornyn said.

Asked if that meant the NRSC would work to defeat Crist, Cornyn warned: “Our job is to elect Republicans so that’s what we’ll do – and I don’t care who it is.”

What I’m really curious about is: when Republican Party operatives try to offer Crist advice, what do they think they’re appealing to? At this point, what can they appeal to?

This is a guy who has been abandoned by his party because They-Who-Must-be-Obeyed have a hard-on for Rubio. Trying to invoke party loyalty seems grotesque even for today’s Republican Party. And they can’t seriously expect him to buy the notion that a grateful party will reward him down the road even though they have to abandon him now.

Leave aside the notion that there is absolutely nothing in the recent history of the Republican Party to make that an even remotely credible promise. The simple fact of the matter is that if Crist quietly steps aside and doesn’t run as an independent — that is to say, if he quietly steps aside in favor of Rubio — then any Republican primary he ever runs in again will attract exactly the same kind of challenge from the right, which will be supported by the same group of people with the same fervor that Rubio’s candidacy has attracted.

In short, unless the Republican Party unexpectedly lurches back toward the center, Crist simply has no future in Republican politics in the foreseeable future. And the number of people who believe there is any chance of an unexpected lurch toward the center is exactly zero, which includes all the guys who are paid large amounts of money by the purveyors of TV news to be outrageously but colorfully wrong about such things (see “punditry”).

So the Republican Party is reduced to trying to persuade Crist that he should refrain from doing the only thing he can possibly do if he wants to continue in politics.

Rob Jesmer is described as the top political strategist for Senate Republicans. We don’t even need to remind ourselves that being sensible or smart, or having the ability to be right about anything, has never been a requirement for being a top political strategist in the Republican Party — I don’t know who you’re thinking of, as you read that; I’m thinking of Karl Rove, whose only real talent consists of being able to make spectacularly false statements with great confidence — because Jesmer’s words do a perfectly adequate job of reminding us of that. This clown evidently believes that, at this point, “key GOP consultants” have some kind of leverage with Crist for some reason.

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This was Crist’s official and very public response to Jesmer:

Although Crist has previously said he intends to run as a Republican, he struck a different note in a Monday television interview.

Asked whether he was considering an independent bid, Crist opened the door to the idea.

“I’m getting a lot of advice in that direction,” Crist said in an interview with WFTS. “And so, I’m a listener. I’m certainly listening to it.”

Earlier in the day, a top Republican campaign official predicted that Crist would not run in the GOP primary.

His strongest statement to date about the possibility of running as an independent.

The NYT made this the lede of their “Crist’s reaction” story.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, facing pressure from fellow Republicans to abandon his Senate campaign, said Monday that he would not allow party leaders in Washington to push him from the race and declared that he was considering running for the seat as an independent.

They don’t actually provide any direct quotes, though, that can be said to translate into a declaration that “he was considering running for the seat as an independent.”