Will Republican Over Reach At Every Level Tank The Florida GOP In 2012?

As you probably know, Blue America has been more active in House races than in gubernatorial or even Senate races. And we've never found any presidential candidate worthy of asking our donors to contribute to. Blue America looks for solid progressive leaders with a values and principles-driven world view-- like the half dozen we've endorsed so far this cycle. So when we see the constant stream of news about how Scott Walker is destroying the Republican Party brand in Wisconsin and Rick Snyder is doing the same in Michigan, in each case through ideologically-driven over reach, the first thing we start thinking about are the opportunities to win back House seats that Republicans grabbed in 2010. Yesterday the news-- for us-- out of Ohio was good: In One Month, 214,399 Ohioans Sign Petition To Stop Kasich's Anti-Worker Law. And thanks to Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand-inspired attack on Medicare, voters in Ohio know that the problem isn't just with the deranged Kasich but with an entire political party-- the Republicans-- that has gone seriously off the tracks and veered dangerously far from the mainstream of American thought.

Even normally somnolent, complacent Floridians are picking up the vibe that something has gone terribly wrong-- and that they need to rouse themselves and do something about it. Ryan's attack on Medicare is a disaster for seniors in every single state. But guess which state's seniors get hit the hardest-- yes, Floridians, where so many seniors have gone to retire. According to Congress' Joint Economic Committee, out-of-pocket health expenses for the typical Florida 65 year-old traditional Medicare enrollee in 2022 would be $7,145.14. If Ryan's plan-- which virtually every Republican in the House voted for-- is ever signed into law, that same senior would instead be paying $14,528.31-- an increase of $7,383.16. Their out-of-pocket costs more than double! It's cruel that Florida should bear the biggest burden of any state. And every single Florida Republican voted for it; not a single one had the guts to buck their party and stand up for Florida's hard pressed senior citizens. Realistically, this one vote alone should jeopardize the House seats of Daniel Webster, Sandy Adams, Allen West, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Rivera, Steve Southerland, Richard Nugent, Bill Young, and Dennis Ross.

And then there's the role that Florida's radical right governor is playing to further tarnish the Republican image in the minds of voters. As the Daily Beast reported Friday, "The cycle of over-reach and backlash is in over-drive these days."

The latest sign: on Tuesday, Alvin Brown became the first Democrat elected mayor of Jacksonville-- Florida's largest city-- in 20 years.

Just seven months ago, Republicans swept the Sunshine State with Tea Party-backed candidate Rick Scott winning the governor's office with a 1.2 percent margin of victory.

But instead of consolidating support by reaching out and winning over the reasonable edge of the opposition, as popular past Republican governors like Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist have done, Scott continued with his campaign posture of refusing to talk to the press. He canceled a $2 billion federal high-speed rail project and is seeking to delay (and functionally deny) implementation of an anti-gerrymandering reform ballot referendum overwhelmingly passed in 2010.

Now Rick Scott finds himself the least popular newly elected governor in Florida history. It's not just a matter of the honeymoon being over-- this looks like a drunken Vegas marriage heading for a shotgun divorce.
 
Fifty-five percent of Florida voters disapprove of Scott's job in office, while only 32 percent approve, according to a mid-April PPP poll. The Suffolk University poll found that 41 percent of respondents said the new gov's first months in office had been "negative and damaging" while only 26 percent described it as "positive and productive." The analysis by Suffolk Political Director David Paleologos is worth quoting at length: "It's taken Gov. Scott less than 100 days to begin a free fall in popularity and to generate negative perceptions about job performance and damaging the state he was elected to lead…There has been a backlash in public opinion on both sides of the aisle in response to his aggressive and uncompromising leadership style."

Reflecting on the upset in the Jacksonville mayor's race, St. Petersburg Political Editor Adam Smith said, "Jacksonville is a Republican stronghold, but even with that relatively conservative electorate polls show Barack Obama more popular than Rick Scott. That election in Florida's largest city was not about Obama or Scott, but there's no question that Scott's talk about draconian cuts to school budgets and other services helped elect a Democrat arguing that cuts need to be targeted and strategic. One of the best days for Democrat Alvin Brown came when Rick Scott came to Jacksonville to campaign for the Republican mayoral nominee at a Tea Party rally."

Back to the Blue America-endorsed candidate for the House seat that includes big chunks of Orange, Volusia, Brevard and Seminole counties in central Florida, Nick Ruiz. He hopes to keep reminding Florida voters about Sandy Adam's unhinged extremism and her eagerness to gut Medicare. He can use some help in getting out his message. This morning, when I asked him for a comment, he said, "We have to understand, no matter how much certain dysfunctional personalities (e.g. Rep. Paul Ryan WI-1) try to make America about personal ambition-- it will never be so. America is not about personal enrichment. America is about community well-being. And that is a concept people like Paul Ryan, or Newt Gingrich, or Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN-6) will never understand. So the Republican budget proposes massive cuts to the U.S. Social Safety Net-- in particular, senior citizens, and their much relied upon Medicare health insurance. Do you think that senior citizens can afford $7,000+ more dollars out-of-pocket for health insurance when they are already on a tight fixed income? Absolutely not. And what's the trade? Some expected brownie points from rich old tyrants for these Republican wealth seekers? In 2012, reject these political careerists, and morally corrupt opportunists-- put a progressive Democrat in Congress."

Not just a Democrat-- FL-24 tried that with conservative corporate shill Suzanne Kosmas and it went terribly wrong-- but a progressive Democrat, in the mold of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, people who understood the use of government to make the lives of ordinary citizens better and more rewarding.