He wants to be governor again, and polls show he would beat Rick Scott if the election were held today.

Big deal. Richie Incognito would beat Scott if the election were held today. . . .

During the last campaign, Scott spent about $75 million of his own dough, having made a fortune presiding over a healthcare conglomerate that perpetrated one of the largest Medicare frauds since the beginning of Medicare.

In a sane and sensible place, that’s a résumé that would kill a person’s chances for high office. But not in Florida, the eternal land of suckers.

This time around, Scott will have the full backing of the Republican establishment, which basically shunned him in 2010, and a richer war chest for attacking Charlie Crist.

That doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him next year just because he switched to their party. Being likeable gets you only so far. People want a governor who’s tough, caring and steady.

We ended up with Scott because Charlie left the job. He doesn’t get a free pass back to Tallahassee without some explaining.

Baggers target Buchanan

Jeremy Wallace: "The Tea Party Leadership Fund has created a “Primaries for Traitors” fund aimed at raising money and recruiting candidates nationwide to run against Republicans who voted to re-open the government in mid-October. Among their targets: U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key." "Tea Party targets Buchanan".

"Jolly conductor on a Florida train to nowhere"

The Sunshine State News' Nancy Smith comes out with both guns blazing, arguing that for "20 years Charlie's been the jolly conductor on a Florida train to nowhere, stopping at stations, picking up people bound for some promised destination, but Charlie's train never arrives." "Charlie and Me: Why Love Never Bloomed".

"Wash with money. Spin. Repeat"

Marc Caputo writes that

On Saturday, Obama golfed with former basketball star Alonzo Mourning at the exclusive Grande Oaks Golf Club in Davie, site of the classic 1980 comedy movie Caddyshack. Then it was back to Washington.

Thus the political cycle churns: Wash with money. Spin. Repeat. . . .

Obama made sure to rebut Republican critics, like those in Florida, who have raised a fuss about people without insurance while simultaneously refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That denies the possibility of coverage to as many as 848,000 Floridians.

“More people could have healthcare via Medicaid,” Obama said. “But that’s not happening because of politics.”

Republican Gov. Rick Scott ducked the issue in a written statement.

“The President’s healthcare law is causing hundreds of thousands of Floridians to lose their health insurance plans. The White House should focus on helping these families, not Medicaid, which our state just recently reformed to be more flexible, accessible and cost-conscious,” Scott said. “Unfortunately, the White House’s politics of deflection and distraction won’t give anyone their healthcare back, even after the president promised that if they liked their plans, they could keep them.”

First off, those who have lost their current individual-market insurance plans will qualify for new ones. So it’s not as if insurance coverage is really lost.

And the overwhelming number of people aren’t affected by this because they’re insured through group plans provided by their employers. Still, Obamacare is raising the cost of some large-employer plans as well.

True, some people will pay more (despite Obama’s suggestion to the contrary). But some will pay less. Many will have better coverage and more access to coverage. There’s not enough data yet. Just spin from both sides.

As for the Medicaid reform Scott referenced, Obama’s administration signed off on it. And if Medicaid is so much better now, it makes the argument against expanding it more strained.

Republicans who control Florida — which has the nation’s second-highest rate of uninsured people — have done almost nothing to make insurance better or more affordable. Before Obamacare, tens of thousands of Floridians lost coverage yearly and millions experienced double-digit price increases without much attention from legislative leaders.

"Nationally, according to a new Pew Research poll, the president’s numbers have begun to tank. But the Affordable Care Act’s approval ratings (which are poor) have appeared to hold steady amid the barrage of negative publicity over the failures of Obamacare’s sign-up website."

Polls show Scott’s approval ratings remain low as well, and that former Gov. Charlie Crist, who wants his old job back, would probably beat Scott if the election were held today.

The Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat attended one of Obama’s high-dollar fundraisers in Coral Gables on Friday, waved to the news media from the balcony on Coral Way, and then sauntered down to the news-starved cameras (blocked from the fundraiser) afterward to grab free and easy media coverage for the nightly news.

When he was a Republican and then an independent in his failed 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, Crist trashed the Affordable Care Act. Now, as a Democrat, he praises it. This is Crist’s sixth run for statewide office.

Wash with money. Spin. Repeat.

Trib editors equate healthcare "lies" with Bush saying Iraq had WMDs

The Obama's "healthcare lie" is, according to the Tampa Trib editors equivalent to George Bush "saying Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction." "President refuses to recognize Obamacare’s flaws".

The editorial is embarrassing. Here is a more accurate picture: "Stop the faux outrage over Obama's 'healthcare lie'".

"A quietly effective member of the GOP majority"

"At 62, Rich Nugent is that rare breed of politician who is actually happy where he is instead of looking to move up the ladder. There’s a temptation to write Nugent off as a back bencher since he was first elected to Congress in 2010 and isn’t the flashiest of congressmen. But a close look shows Nugent has become a quietly effective member of the GOP majority." "Rich Nugent: Florida's Quietly Effective Conservative Congressman".

"Once a close friend and ally of Crist's"

"Republicans came out in droves last week to tee off on Charlie Crist as he launched his bid to challenge Rick Scott. One of the GOP leaders who took a few whacks at the former governor was once a close friend and ally of Crist's who could be looking to make a political comeback down the road -- George LeMieux." "George LeMieux Steps on Crist to Springboard Back to Limelight".

Welcome to Election Year 2014. It’s going to be a rough and mud-spattered ride.

This time around it’s starting far earlier than usual, with the promise of lots more to come.

Gov. Rick Scott plans to spend upward of $100 million through his political campaign committee to retain his seat.

Considering that Mr. Scott won his own primary in 2010 by using his personal fortune to finance attack ads portraying conservative former Attorney Gen. Bill McCollum as a liberal, negative campaigning is likely to overshadow the real issues.

No doubt, Mr. Crist’s changing political affiliations and policy positions are an irresistible target. Compared to Florida’s ex-governor, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney seems like a pillar of consistency.

Mr. Crist will have to work hard to persuade skeptics that his convictions are something other than a matter of political convenience.

Bad timing

"President Obama is closing out a fundraising trip to South Florida by hitting the links at a golf club — made famous in the 1980 classic film Caddyshack." "President Obama hits the Fort Lauderdale golf course where Caddyshack was filmed".

"Looming disaster many Floridians don’t know about . . . a 'zombie apocalypse'"

"It’s the looming disaster many Floridians still don’t know about, the equivalent of a 'zombie apocalypse' for the state’s multibillion-dollar citrus industry." "Citrus greening threatens Florida orange industry".

"We’ve got more than our share of cranky oldsters in Florida"

Fred Grimm reminds us that we all "live in Florida, where the state leadership pretends public sentiment about marijuana hasn’t evolved since the days when young Republicans were grooving to The Captain & Tennille on their eight-track cartridges."

Last spring, in a burst of drug-war nostalgia, the Legislature passed a quaint throw-back law (32-2 in the Senate, 112-3 in the House) that outlawed sales of bongs and water pipes. In fact, selling any smoking device is now illegal in Florida other than a pipe “that is primarily made of briar, meerschaum, clay or corn cob.” Which is such a peculiar specification, it was as if legislators were puffing SleeStax X Skunk before the vote.

Meanwhile, 20 other states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, eleven of those by statewide referendum. Most of those passed by more than a 60 percent margin. Perhaps something similar could happen in Florida, given that we’re stuck with the most arthritic, oh-my-aching-back/knees/elbows electorate in the western world. A group called United for Care has collected 200,000 names on a petition toward the 683,149 needed by Feb. 1 to get a medical marijuana initiative on the statewide ballot next fall.

This has not pleased the state’s attorney general, speaker of the House and president of the Senate, who have demanded that the Florida Supreme Court keep this measure away from the voters. Senate President Don Gaetz complained the pot petition appealed “to voters by using language that evokes emotional responses [that] are not appropriate for ballot titles and summaries of proposed constitutional amendments.”

Gaetz knows something about misleading ballot initiatives. As the Herald’s Rochelle Koff pointed out, Gaetz was one of the architects of a blatant misnomer called the “Health Freedom Act,” which was designed to torpedo the Affordable Care Act. Last year, the state Supreme Court said the Health Freedom act was misleading and needed to be rewritten. It was. And voters rejected it.

In October, a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Americans thought the drug should be legalized. Straight legalization. None of this medical marijuana pretense. (Back in 1969, when Gallup made its first query on legalizing marijuana, only 12 percent said yes. Times have changed.)

Among Democrats and independents, more than 60 percent told Gallup they favored legalization, compared to only 35 percent of Republicans. . . . Florida’s anti-pot legislators might find solace in another finding in last month’s Gallup Poll. Some 53 percent of the respondents over 65 still oppose legalization. And we’ve got more than our share of cranky oldsters in Florida.