Florida Senate Race Comes Down To Independents

Florida Senate Race Comes Down To Independents

As goes Massachusetts, so goes Florida?

Former House Speaker Marco Rubio is salivating at Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, as he should. Rubio is young and attractive and a powerful speaker, even if you disagree with him as he stumps to be the next GOP senator from Florida. Rubio hasn’t posed in the buff for Cosmopolitan, which didn’t seem to hurt Brown the hottie.

Florida Democrats say there’s no comparison because, unlike Massachusetts, Florida’s majority in the Legislature, the governor and most of the Cabinet are Republican. Surely, they say, voters will blame the GOP for Florida’s unemployment, foreclosures and struggling schools and health services. They point to gains made in Democratic voter registration, too.

Pobrecitos, they’re just not getting it.

It’s not about Democratic registration or keeping the base happy with trillion-dollar spending sprees that are crushing America’s economy as deficits go astronomical.

It’s about swaying non-affiliated voters, independents who make up about one in five voters in Florida. We vote for the candidate, not the party. We decide on issues, not on platforms created by corporate America or labor unions or religious leaders. And most independents are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

]]>

NEED FOR NEW IDEAS

We are gut voters looking for new ideas, for leaders to crack the partisan divide, which is why Barack Obama was so attractive to independents. He talked the talk of change, of hope, of understanding what the average Joe, sans sixpack, wants from government.

Then, as president, he left it up to the most liberal Democrats in Congress to come up with the specifics, but not before selling out to insurance companies. So much for change. Labor unions got their protection from the proposed tax on Cadillac insurance policies while the rest of us are expected to pay up if the reform becomes law.

Wall Street? Blah, blah, blah. Obama talked the game, but didn’t demand a change in bank rules. The bankers are getting multimillion-dollar bonuses on the backs of the public bailout, and now the president is talking tough again.

Unemployment? Obama let Congress do the dealing, which meant the public unions got theirs. Money poured to public-school teachers, fire departments and cops — all absolutely necessary expenses to avoid ever-more crammed classrooms and unsafe streets.

But the unemployed construction workers, secretaries and small-business people didn’t get much. A little more money in their unemployment checks and food stamps. They want jobs, not welfare.

Again, Obama missed a chance to push for more money for public works projects in which private contractors could hire workers for tax cuts focused on small businesses — not Fortune 500 companies. All of this he should have done his first year.

ATTRACTING INDEPENDENTS

Things can change, of course, and if unemployment starts to drop like a rock by the fall, there’s a chance for the Democrats — if they learn from Massachusetts, where Brown captured the majority of independent voters who went to the polls.

The irony is Brown is more of a moderate a la Gov. Charlie Crist than a true-red conservative like Rubio. Brown had to take the middle road in the bluest of blue states. Just as Charlie has had to be moderate in the most purple of states, Florida, where only a few hundred votes can win a presidency for either party.

Quoting & Saving just got easier…Easy To Insure ME Health Insurance Quotes… Quote all carriers in seconds

Florida Health Insurance
Georgia Health Insurance