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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
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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 Saturday, January 01, 2005

"Jeb!" 2008

    Do the nations hit by the tsunami really need us to send, of all people, "Jeb!"? And precisely what is our "Jeb!" going to do, except perhaps get in the way?
    "We in Florida know how powerful mother nature is," said Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bush. "During our unprecedented hurricane season this year, the governor took a lead role in responding, assessing the damage and coordinating relief efforts."
    "Bush puts experience to use on relief team". Spare me the super-"Jeb!" imagery; the guy's a politician adept at little more than riding on his family's coat tails.

    And the Tallahassee Democrat ought to be ashamed of itself for inserting this as the lead sentence in its above-cited article:
    It's Gov. Jeb Bush's experience with mother nature, not his relationship with his brother, that may be the reason he's been chosen, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, to lead a U.S. delegation to earthquake and tsunami-ravaged parts of Asia.
    There is something discomfiting about all this head in the sand cheerleading.

    This piece, however, seems to hit the mark:
    It also may set the stage for Gov. Jeb Bush's own run at the White House in 2008, despite his insistence he is headed back to the business world in Miami. The governor's staff says he is perfectly suited for the mission after overseeing disaster relief in Florida following four hurricanes.

    "It's not that he brings a special expertise about emergency management," Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said Friday. "It's that he's the president's brother, and symbols are important. This is partly a public-relations operation. The president got off on the wrong foot here and got a lot of criticism."
    "Bush sending brother Jeb to Asia seen as savvy". Savvy? Maybe. Unsavory? Definitely.

9:53 AM

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