TAMPA — When the votes have been counted next Tuesday, Florida
will almost certainly have come up R — not roses, Republicans. And
conservative Republicans at that.
In a state where Democrats have about five percent more
registered voters than Republicans, those outnumbered Republicans
are early-voting at a rate 20 percent higher than Democrats. And
there’s no end of the “enthusiasm gap” in sight here. Republicans
also out-voted Democrats in the primary here in
August.
Polls show Republicans with statistically significant to
comfortable leads in every state-wide race save that for governor,
where Florida CFO Alex Sink and former health care executive Rick
Scott are within the margin of error. Even in this race the latest
Rasmussen Poll, an outfit which had a good record of predicting
races in Florida in 2008, gives Scott a six-point lead.
Republican candidates for all four Florida cabinet posts,
all of whom are running on conservative platforms, are taking poll
leads into the final week of the campaign. If they win, they will
work with a Florida Legislature that now sports Republican
advantages of 26 to 14 in the Senate and 76-44 in the House, and
shows no signs of being bluer after next Tuesday.
Republican strength is being felt down the ticket as well.
Two east-coast liberal Democratic Congressmen are getting strong
competition from conservative challengers. Even Florida’s 11th
Congressional District — Tampa and bits of St. Petersburg and
Bradenton — is in play this year. This is remarkable as Florida 11
was drawn by the Republican state legislature to be a sump to pour
Democratic voters into so the adjoining districts could remain
comfortably Republican. No Republican has ever represented Tampa in
the U.S. House since this seat was created in 1962.
To win in Florida 11 a Republican must get all the
Republicans to the polls, virtually run the table with
independents, and convince some moderate Democrats to go R.
Normally this would be out of the question. But 2010 is not a
normal political year.
Incumbent Florida 11 Congresswoman Kathy Castor has a
straight Obama voting record — “Stimulus” slush fund, cap and
trade, ObamaCare, the entire disaster — and she’s arrogant and
complacent into the bargain. In “public hearings” into ObamaCare
Castor was disdainful of those who spoke against what was clearly
very unpopular legislation in her district. She suggested that
those who opposed it were stooges of the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries.
This has given retired Army Colonel Mike Prendergast, an
articulate, informed, and energetic conservative, a shot at the
impossible. He’s been endorsed by still popular former Florida
governor Jeb Bush and by Mike Huckabee. His campaign has created a
lot of buzz in a district where even a fair number of Democrats
believe Obama and Company have gone too far.
There’s some debate over which office and which race is
most important. But there’s little doubt that the top of the
Florida Republican ticket this year is former Florida House Speaker
Marco’s Rubio’s run for the U.S. Senate. The articulate and
conservative 39-year-old Rubio has created a lot of excitement
among national as well as Florida conservatives. There’s already
debate among savvy political observers on the question of what year
Rubio will wind up on the national ticket. He’s that
good.
Rubio’s campaign has tried to keep a cap on this kind of
feverish talk. After all, he hasn’t even won the Senate seat yet.
But almost all polls show him with a double-digit lead in Florida’s
curious three-way Senate race. The latest Real Clear Politics
average of polls shows Rubio with 42.5 percent, Florida’s
independent governor Charlie Crist, who a few months ago was sort
of a Republican, at 30.8, and liberal Democratic Miami Congressman
Kendrick Meek trailing badly at 19.5.
Clearly Obama’s two-point win in Florida in 2008 was a
one-off, an unforced error, not part of a trend from red to blue.
Florida was then and remains a majority center-right state. Obama’s
leftist core was hiding in plain sight in ‘08, but voters didn’t
get much help from the left-stream media in recognizing this, so
lots of Floridians cast votes in November of 2008 that they soon
came to regret. They don’t appear to be in the mood to be fooled
again in 2010.
