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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Sunday, January 30, 2005

'Jeb!" 2008? It's Genetic

    Heaven help us if "Jeb!" runs:
    It is possible, of course, that Florida Gov. John Ellis Bush, who calls himself Jeb, is a victim of a genetic malfunction and thus has been deprived by nature of a lust for power that has characterized his ancestors for four generations. ...

    The Bushes have a remarkable, and profitable, family characteristic. They present themselves as open and likable personalities, the kind of guys you'd like next door. And they operate like gut fighters.

    The public record would suggest that if you don't think they've got their collective eyes on the ultimate political prize for Jeb, you probably believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. I saw, and covered, what George H.W. Bush did to Michael Dukakis in 1988 in one of the dirtiest presidential election races of modern times, the infamous "Willie Horton" campaign. It was a campaign of calculated racism - which of course was denied.

    And consider this about older brother George W. In 2000 he lost the popular vote by about half a million, and was awarded the White House only because of the disgraceful, anachronistic Electoral College - with generous help from family pal Katherine Harris and a politicized U.S. Supreme Court. A gracious and logical response to this undeserved good fortune would have been to support some kind of middle-road government to honor the message delivered by the voters.

    Forget it. What we got was a more conservative agenda than even Ronald Reagan aspired to, a war to protect us against nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and a president who now, in his hubris, claims a mandate. Fifty-one percent is not a mandate.

    The word for this kind of behavior is opportunism. We are dealing with a family in which opportunism has been the name of the game. And right now it is fair conjecture that opportunity will knock one day for Jeb Bush.
    "Jeb protests, but higher aspirations are in his genes".

9:05 AM

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