Good News
The same winning team of teabaggers and nine-twelvers that provided the recent entertainment in the 23rd Congressional district of New York are talking about helping out in the Florida Senate race.
Kendrick Meek would have a very hard slog in the general election against Charlie Crist, so if the TB/9-12 whackos can take Charlie out, Florida might have two Senators who call themselves Democrats.
You have to admit that getting a Democrat elected for the the first time in the area’s history, a history that goes back to the founding of the United States, an area that has voted solid Republican since the Republican Party was founded from the remnants of the Whigs, is quite an accomplishment. After doing that, electing a Democrat to the Senate in Florida should be easy. 😈
Update: Republican Party officials are now saying they won’t be supporting candidates in primaries with any money. While the GOP is hurting in the fund-raising area, I don’t think it is a coincidence that they announced this the day after the mess in NY.
2 comments
Are you sure about the Whigs? I know there were, informally, “Northern Whigs” and “Southern Whigs” in antebellum America. I haven’t checked — emphasize that — but I would have thought Florida went for the Democrat, Stephen Douglas, in the 1860 election, or someone even worse, not Lincoln. To be sure, the Republican Party of Lincoln tried to appeal to Southerners, too, but at least at the national level it did not become the racist supporter of the KKK and like orgs until after the 1876 election was stolen from Tilden (and the wrong Florida electoral college delegation was recognized).
Although he had at one time been a Free Soiler, Hayes began the Republican Party’s long national slide toward damnation, only to have it briefly (and partially) rescued by Teddy Roosevelt. Southern Dems, of course, tried to out-racist the Republicans for much of the 20th century, even after 1965.
Indeed, there was a time — even in my lifetime — when a large part of the Republican Party — mostly in the Northeast and Far West — openly prided itself on being socially progressive. How long ago that seems, now!
John, I was talking about NY 23, in the Whig comment, and having been Republican ever since. Florida statewide was solidly in the Democratic camp until the 1980s, when the real shift to the GOP by the Dixiecrats was in full swing.
The Republican Party of New York was very progressive until approximately the same time period. The most conservative would be considered centrists, and even then it was on fiscal policy, not social policy.