More Bad News For Florida GOP

Lobbyist & RNC member Al Cardenas sticks a knife in Marco Rubio's back

Al Cardenas may not be a household name but in Florida GOP circles he's more than just one of Washington's sleaziest and most corrupt lobbyists. He's the former chairman of that state's GOP. He's also the man who nurtured the career and political ambitions of a young Cuban-American fanatic, Marco Rubio, and is widely considered Rubio's mentor and political godfather. The godfather just endorsed Rubio's opponent, Florida gay-blade Charlie Crist, for the open Senate seat. Crist has been scooping up all the cash and all the Cuban-American political big names, leaving Rubio-- whose campaign is broke and paying employees with IOUs-- with nothing but the teabaggers and dittoheads. Cardenas' stab in the back may be the most painful for Rubio-- rumored to be about to pull out of the race and run for Attorney General-- but Rubio has been abandoned by all his former Cuban-American allies, including the notorious gangsters Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, and outgoing Senator Mel Martinez (who voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor today, something Rubio was hysterically opposed to). Cardenas' statement to the press was a none-too-subtle call for Rubio to pack it up and start working on the far right flank of the Republican base to get behind the more mainstream gay blade. "As we look to the 2010 election cycle, I urge Republicans to unite the Republican Party by standing behind Governor Crist. With Governor Crist atop the ticket, I am confident that our party will achieve sweeping victories in 2010."

But Republican woes aren't just at the top of the ticket. Most of their first tier draft picks to run for Congress have bowed out, well aware that Florida has swung Democrat and is trending away from the crazy right-wing politics the GOP base hears about from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly and is demanding for their state. Today GOP hopes were shattered for defeating freshman Suzanne Kosmas as their top recruit, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, publicly stated he's not running. Right after meeting with top Republican strategists at the NRCC Holtz told a TV audience, "I'm working for ESPN. I don't want to run for Congress." Instead Pete Sessions will put up some teabagging birther to try to win the seat back from Kosmas who defeated an entrenched incumbent, Jack Abramoff operative Tom Feeney, 57-41%.

Word that Holtz was unimpressed by the clowns at the NRCC came right on top of yesterday's news that popular St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft has decided to jump into the congressional race against far right extremist Tom Rooney, who brags how he's voted against nearly every proposal that's come from the Obama administration, regardless of the impact on his own constituents. Rooney is a hard core obstructionist and an empty-headed ideologue with no solutions to Florida's woes.

CQPolitics immediately changed it's rating for the race from Safe Republican to Republican Favored. Florida's 16th CD is the third worst hit congressional district in the country by the mortgage crisis. There have been 25,532 foreclosures so far and over 85,000 are projected over the next 4 years. Rooney was forced by constituent pressure to cross the aisle and vote with Democrats for the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act. But today he is fighting tooth and nail against health care reform and says he will never support the public option that his donors in the Insurance companies and Medical-Industrial Complex are so adamantly against. Odd that Rooney should be so opposed to health care reform when the Center For American Progress found that his constituents would be among the people with the most to gain! These are the results of their examination of health care in Florida and how President Obama's proposals would help:

• 850 residents of Florida are losing health insurance every day, and 14,000 Americans cover everyone-- and $1,100 more nationally.

• Our broken health insurance system will cost the Florida economy as much as $19 billion this year in productivity losses due to the uninsured-- and up to $248 billion nationally.

• In Florida there has been a 15 percent increase in the uninsured rate since 2007.

• 3,920,000 are uninsured today in Florida.

• In Florida the combined market share of the top two insurers is 45 percent, limiting employers’ and families’ health insurance options as well as the care they receive.

• The average family premium will rise from $12,763 to $21,779 by 2019 in Florida without health care reform.

• In Florida, without health care reform, 556,070 will have lost coverage from January 2008 to December 2010.

• In Florida, 1,854,000 people would gain coverage as a result of the House health care reform bill by 2013, and 2,982,000 would gain coverage by 2019.

• A typical Florida family will pay $21,779 for health coverage in 2019 without health care reform.

The same local folks who forced Rooney to vote for the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act should start pressuring him to vote for health care reform. Remember, as bad as the U.S. system is for delivering high quality, low cost health care to regular working families, it's much worse in Florida. And Rooney's approach isn't viable: "Instead of imposing an expensive, government-run healthcare system on the American people," he read from his Republican Talking Points memo, "let's implement some common sense ideas that will make healthcare more affordable and accessible." His common sense ideas? An apple a day and more tax breaks. Someone should sit Tom Rooney down and make him watch this clip:



Meanwhile, Florida has something else to worry about. An angry mob of astro-turfed right-wing dupes and Obama-haters showed up at a health care forum in Tampa, hosted by Congresswoman Kathy Castor and state Representative Betty Reed, to prevent a serious discussion of the issues. The teabagger and dittohead thugs, encouraged all day by poisonous Republican Party officials and Hate Talk Radio hosts, soon turned violent and started fist fights.

Angry protesters and strong supporters are clashing inside and all around a health care reform town hall meeting in Downtown Tampa. The meeting which was scheduled to begin at 6:00 at the Children's Board of Hillsborough County drew hundreds of people who quickly began to overwhelm staff and event organizers at the front entrance.

As the building filled to capacity, angry protesters stuck outside began to scream, yell, and chant. At one point, those trying to get inside began banging on windows as Tampa Police officers quickly spread out guarding all entrances.

Karen Thurman, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party was appalled because she has been working hard to encourage people to come to these meetings to exchange ideas and to have their concerns answered.

"Throughout the summer, we have been reaching out to Floridians to engage in an important debate on the future our health care system. We have heard story after story from people who are struggling to get the care they need.

"Recently, their thoughtful discussions are being interrupted by angry mobs-- well funded and organized by Washington special interests-- attempting to drown out the voices of the hard-working Floridians who are desperate for health insurance reform. These groups are not concerned about Americans' access to quality heath care, but are extreme ideologues, only interested in 'breaking' the President and thwarting the change Americans voted for last November. 

"In the last three years the Republican Party has lost control of the House, the Senate and the White House because they have offered no ideas and no solutions. Now, these well funded right-wing groups are following the example of the Republican Party and instead of providing real ideas for fixing our broken health care system, they're doing everything they can to drown out thoughtful discussion and spread vicious and hateful lies. Their desperate behavior does nothing to help their cause, Floridians or our country. 

"Despite their threatening tactics, we will continue our work to give a voice to the majority of Floridians who believe that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care."

It was a relief to see the Lou Dobbs network allow one of its anchors, Rick Sanchez, to get into the real story of these violent assaults on democracy. Sanchez nailed the ratty hide of Rick Scott, one of the financiers of the mayhem, to the barn door (just as Chris Matthews did with a Freedomworks shill on Harball this afternoon). Take a look:



UPDATE: And Now Mel Martinez Is Resigning

No, not just retiring; resigning. It really is the party of quitters. Will Charlie Crist make a play for the far right base he's losing to Rubio by appointing Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush as an interim senator? After all, she'd fit right in with the obstructionist GOP Senate caucus.

Mel Martinez Retiring From Senate

Over the last few days people have been speculating about which Senators up for re-election in 2010 would be most vulnerable. No list is complete without listing Florida Republican Mel Martinez. Obama's victory there, a demographic shift towards the center and away from the extreme right, and tanking job approval numbers have combined to place a big fat bull's eye on Martinez' back. But this morning he made it clear that he will not be defeated. That's because he's retiring. He said he wants "more free time and a less scheduled life." OK. Perhaps he could sell those ideas to some of the more extremist members of his caucus like Jim DeMint, Judd Gregg and Tom Coburn?

Martinez is the second Republican-- after Sam Brownback-- to declare he wouldn't be running for re-election in 2010. This year voluntary GOP retirements led to Democratic pickups in New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia.

Earlier today the Democrat who was viewed as the best shot to run against Martinez, Florida's chief financial officer, Alex Sink, took herself out of the running. Perhaps Martinez' decision will cause her to reconsider. But, whatever the case, there are plenty of Democrats eager for that Senate seat, including Congressmembers Kendrick Meek, reactionary Blue Dog Allen Boyd, Ron Klein (who just won his second term), progressive Robert Wexler, and the most nakedly ambitious politician from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And then there are former state House leader Dan Gelber and state Senator Dave Aronberg.

On the Republican side, one politician certain not to run is new House Speaker Ray Sansom who is more likely to be fighting off ethics charges than fighting for higher office. Florida Republicans are trying to get Jeb Bush to run in the one state in the country, other than Utah, where the name isn't toxic. Bush has been talking about forming a shadow government to muck things up for Obama. Others in contention include State Attorney General Bill McCollum, state Senate President Jeff Atwater, former state House speaker Marco Rubio and far right congressmembers Vern Buchanan, Howdy Doody, and Connie Mack. Rumors are already flying that Martinez will retire early, giving Charlie Crist an opportunity to name a successor, achieving two objectives: it gives the Republicans an opportunity to field an incumbent and it prevents the dominant Know Nothing base of the state party from nominating a complete psycho-- like newly elected West Palm Beach Republican Executive Committee member Derek Black, a KKK Sarah Palin type leader or Rep. Jeff Miller-- who would be unable to compete with a mainstream Democrat.

AT THE SOUND OF THE BELL: GOP ISN'T EXACTLY DISINTEGRATING... BUT... CLOSE

While the GOP acclimates itself to the electoral devastation headed their way in 2008-- and puts all its hopes on nurturing future shit-eating candidate General BetrayUs-- GOP members of Congress are doing all they can to minimize the damage to their own careers. Voters are so thoroughly disgusted with Bush's Iraq escalation that respectable Republican senators who have abdicated any semblance of oversight for the past 7 years-- like Richard Lugar, Jon Warner and George Voinovich-- are now calling for Bush to forget his grand designs for making Iraq into an American puppet state. The new CBS poll out today shows 77% of Americans think the war is going badly.

And near universal disgust with Bush, Cheney, their disastrous regime and it's catastrophic policies and venal agenda aren't the only things that bode ill for the Republicans at the polls next year. Even Republican voters have had enough! The Republican Party crafted themselves a brain dead, zombie-like base, incapable of independent thought and Pavlovian in it's response to the dog whistles from Hate Talk Radio and Fox-TV-- commercial enterprises catering to the lowest-information groups and most bigoted people in the country. And now Republican politicians, who were all too willing to feed that tiger are realizing that they're the next meal. The work they did on Bush's failed immigration legislation is killing McCain's presidential hopes and wrecking Lindsey Graham's hopes for re-election to the Senate. If not for the fact that the Bush Regime had the FBI arrest the far right Republican who was opposing Graham, South Carolina Treasurer Tom Ravenel, for selling cocaine, Graham would have had virtually no chance of even winning the GOP nomination. Now Republicans in South Carolina are trying to make a deal to support a Blue Dog Democrat just to teach Graham and other Republican hacks a lesson. Only 31% of South Carolina voters approve of Graham's job performance. And fewer Republicans like him than Democrats!

And the harder the "Amnesty Republicans" fight back, the more the base turns against them. Almost all the rubber stamp senators facing re-election, who supported Bush on everything and who have been supportive of the immigration bill-- from Saxby Chamberpot (GA) on the extreme right to the quartet of fake moderates Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), Smith (OR) & Sununu (NH)-- abandoned Bush at the last minute and bowed to the intense, searing pressure from the dominant Know Nothing wing of the party. Yesterday the GOP's hapless chairman, Florida Senator Mel Martinez, was still defending the failed immigration legislation. He's very lucky he isn't up for re-election next year, but his carping on the issue is ruining the chances for other Republicans to recover from the calamity. He's still calling the Republican base "the voices of negativity." They don't like that and Martinez' approval ratings in Florida are even worse than Graham's and almost as bad as Cheney's! Only 23% of Florida voters think Martinez is doing a good job. I've seen indicted Republican congressmen on their way to prison with higher approval ratings.

Today is the last day of the quarter, a time period Inside the Beltway hacks and pundits look at to figure out who is a serious candidate and who isn't. So if you're thinking about helping out some progressive candidates, today would be a good day. All of our candidates are on our Blue America page and I'd like to especially point out a number of incumbents who have been very steady and unflinching in their support for all of our values and ideals, especially Steve Cohen (TN), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Tom Allen (ME), Jerry Nadler (NY), John Hall (NY), and Hilda Solis (CA). They deserve our appreciation. Also very much deserving our appreciation are real fighters who came close to beating Republican jerks in 2006 and who are going for it again, especially Angie Paccione (CO), Victoria Wulsin (OH), Eric Massa (NY), John Laesch (IL), Charlie Brown (CA), Darcy Burner (WA) and Donna Edwards (MD), whose opponent is a Liebermanlike fake Democrat and, I'm happy to announce, will be our Blue America guest next Saturday at 2pm, EST.