George Bush: Democrats + Politics = Bad

You really have to hand it to these guys sometimes. After all this is the administration that has politicized everything from the CIA, to the Department of Justice to the Drug Czar. You think this might keep them from throwing rocks called politics. But no, it seems that it hasn't slowed them down one little teeny tiny bit.

So what does the Bush administration do when the Democrats are trying to move policy in a direction that Herr Bush doesn't want it to go? Why he accuses the Democrats of playing politics with (fill in the blank) serious issue.

How often have they done this? Why do they do it? And is it working? The answers to these and other questions are below the fold...


How often does the Bush administration accuse the Dems of playing politics with an issue? A Google search of

george bush democrats playing politics

produced 1,950,000 hits. That's right. Nearly two million hits. George Bush has accused the Democrats of playing politics with Iraq, Social Security, homeland security, supporting our troops, trade, terrorism, the federal budget and just about anything else you can imagine. 1,950,000 is a lot of Google hits, particularly for just a 6 1/2 year span. That's roughly 300,000 hits per year of the Bush Administration.

Why do they do this? Is there a method to this madness? The Pew Research Center has been polling on Trends in Political Attitudes and Core Values for 20 years. Over that time period, when Republicans have been in the White House, the number of people agreeing that when something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful went up. When Bill Clinton was President that number went down. When Bush 41 finished the 12 year Republican run in the White House in 1992, 69% of respondents agreed about government run deals being inefficient and wasteful. By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, that number was down to 53%.

That number is now back up to 62%. Republicans create the self fulfilling prophecy about government being inherently bad. They run government into the ground when they are in charge (See Iraq and Katrina) and then they go

see, we told you government was bad.

They also equate government with politics. So whenever the Dems are trying to do something they don't want to happen, they accuse the Dems of just "playing politics", which is bad.

Who is their target audience for this continuous ranting that Dems are "just playing politics"? Not suprisingly, it is the independent voter. The quintessential "persuadable" voter. Again from Pew:

Republicans, Democrats and independents are all more likely today than five years ago to see the government as wasteful, and less likely to say that elected officials care about what regular people think.

61% of Independents now agree with the proposition that government is inefficient and wasteful (remember - government is run by people playing politics). Less than 1/3 of Independents agree with the proposition

Most elected officials care what people like me think

Elected officials. You know those nasty people who "play politics".

How is all this working for the Republicans? Finally, some good news for us, bad news for the Gopers. Here's what Pew has to say:

the Republican Party ... has rapidly lost public support, particularly among political independents. Faced with an unpopular president who is waging an increasingly unpopular war, the proportion of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Republican Party stands at 41%, down 15 points since January 2001.

And who is leading the charge in this change in attitude towards the GOP? Pew has this to say:

perceptions of the GOP have fallen dramatically among political independents: Among voters with no firm ties to either party, favorable views of the GOP have declined from 55% in 2001, to 46% in 2004, to 40% in the current survey.

Despite the Bushco's desperate attempt to paint the Dems as "bad politicians", the independent voters are just not buying it. Good spin can not make up for bad policy forever.

There is a danger here for the Dems however, and Pew spells it out quite clearly:

ratings of the Democratic Party have remained relatively stable. Despite their significant electoral gains in the 2006 midterms, public ratings of the Democratic Party are nearly identical to where they were in 1994, when they lost 52 House seats to the Republicans. And the GOP’s deteriorating image since Bush’s reelection – down 11 points since December 2004 – has not been mirrored by an improved image of the Democratic Party. The 54% favorability rating Democrats receive today is virtually identical to their 53% rating in December 2004.

If the Democrats want to maintain this advantage that the Gopers have handed to us, it is time to stand and deliver.

A Picture To Use - Over and Over Again

I just posted the following comment on Jeffrey Feldman's DKos diary Frameshop: The Photo The GOP Wants To Hide :

The Gopers have been trying very hard to make inroads with African Americans here in Florida. Florida Kossacks should take full advantage of these photos in making our case to the black community.

The photo is of the Republican Presidential candidates who showed up at the NAACP Convention. All one of them - Tom Tancredo.

So the next time you hear of GOP efforts to make inroads into the African American community, make sure and get this photo out there, along with the message:

Here's how much the Republican Party really cares about you.

Every Journey Starts Somewhere



The Blog Florida Blue Logo Contest was a rousing success. Thank you all for participating. There will be more about the results of the contest later. But that is not the subject of today's diary.

Today we are going to talk about the work ahead. However, we are going to do that by taking a look at where we are starting from. It's pretty hard to get to where you want to go if you don't know where you are starting from.

So, with that in mind, follow me down the rabbit hole....


Recently, Media Matters and Campaign for America's Future completed a new joint report called, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth." meowmissy has a diary up on DKos that has a lot of the information from this report. In describing the report, Justin Cole, Online Outreach Coordinator for Media Matters for America, had this to say:

It's a substantial report that will help drive home the point that America – regardless of how the media portrays it – is a progressive nation that
is getting more progressive, including in Florida.

Now to those of us living here that may sound like a startling statement. However, Mr. Cole has supplied us with Florida specific polling to support this seemingly outlandish claim. Consider just these three elements of this polling:

• “Providing health insurance for people who do not already have it—should the federal government spend more on it, the same as now, less, or no money at all?”
  Percent answering “More”: 71%
  
• "Providing financial assistance to public elementary and secondary schools—should the federal government spend more on it, the same as now, less, or no money at all?”
  Percent answering “more”: 71%
  
• “The federal government banning all abortions—do you favor or oppose the federal government doing this?”
  Percent opposed: 67%

Do these results surprise you? Are these the results that you would expect in a state where:

• Only 2 of 7 statewide elected posts are held by Democrats
  
• The Congressional Delegation is 16 Republicans and 9 Democrats
  
• 42 out of 120 House seats are held by Democrats
  
• 14 of 40 Senate seats are held by Democrats

So we seem to have a pretty progressive electorate given the polling results noted above. That ought to put some wind in our sails as we go into the 2008 election cycle. This is particularly true looking back at the notable successes we had in 2006. This gives rise to the question: What do we do with this information?

Here are my suggestions:

• We try to run as many good candidates as we can against as many vulnerable Republican seats as we can find.

Good candidates are preferably people with prior elected experience, or absent that, a compelling personal story. They also should be able to raise substantial funds and / or a major grassroots effort on their own. Vulnerable Republican seats are open seats, seats held by freshmen, or seats where the incumbent has an approval rating below 50%.

• We make sure that these good candidates talk about their progressive values.

Remember that polling data? 71% of the electorate is for doing more to provide health care to those in need. That's compassion and a sense of community. We should be talking about that.

71% of the electorate is for doing more for public education. Quality public education is the great equalizer in this country. That's fairness. We should be talking about that.

67% are against the government banning all abortions. That's freedom. We should be talking about that.

The numbers tell us the public is on our side. We should be sure they know that we are on their side.

That is where we should start our journey in our quest to Blog Florida Blue.

Reflections on SD-3

I have read all the excellent posts put up around the state about the results of the SD-3 race. Ken's piece on What Went Wrong on the Florida Progressive Coalition raised many excellent questions and provides some insightful thoughts. Ray's Postmortem for SD-3 pointed out a lot of hard lessons learned. There are always lessons to be learned from any election. They are just easier to take if you win. OK, small correction already. I've been trying to read Why Calling Supervoters is Dumb on Grassroots Brevard but something over there keeps crashing my browser. And I have read Tally's piece More Thoughts on SD3, which is a good segue to where I am going.


The first three pieces, including what I could read of the Grassroots Brevard post before my browser crashed, are what I would call tactical reviews, for the most part. Tally's piece comes closer to what I would call a strategic reflection. And that is the direction that I am going to try to go.


If we are going to attempt to play the Florida version of the 50 state strategy, we are going to have to be strategic about it. There are three legs to the successful campaign stool. The legs are the Candidate, the Issues, and the Money. We all know what happens to a stool with less than three legs, don't we. So let's review the SD-3 race with a strategic eye towards these three legs.


I don't know Suzan Franks. Never have had the opportunity to meet her. I do know some folks who worked very hard for her. I plan on knocking back more than a few beers with one of them very soon. So what I am about to say is not about Suzan Franks. I am sure there are a number of Senate Districts in this state where Suzan would have been able to put up better results. But SD-3?. What I am really trying to say here is that we need to match the candidate to the district. This particular district might have looked attractive because the previous incumbent was known as a "moderate". But this is really, with the exception of Leon, a pretty conservative district, and we needed a conservative Democratic candidate here. The best example I can give you of this is the SD-10 race last year. Steve Gorham was a candidate hand made for this very conservative Senate seat. Steve is a great guy and made a terrific showing against an incumbent county commissioner, Rhonda Storms. I think we'll be hearing more from Steve in the future. Another example is Alan Boyd in FL-02. Only a Blue dog could win as a Dem in that district. The R's tried very hard to unseat Boyd in 2004 and lost. The result? Boyd was unopposed in 2006.

Another problem that Suzan Franks had in SD-3 was her relative newcomer status in that district. Running against Charlie Dean, formerly the long time sheriff in Citrus County, put Suzan at a huge disadvantage in the County with the most voters in SD-3. So what do these two things tell us strategically? They both point to the need for Dems to build our bench from the ground up. If we had been able to field a candidate who was a long time office holder and resident of SD-3, whose political philosophy was more suited to the district, I am sure we would have had a much better showing. I believe this is particularly true in a seat like SD-3, but it is also more or less true in any other senate seat.

Democrats win when we can clearly articulate that are values put us on the side of the voters on the issues. The top 3 issues to voters in Florida are property taxes, insurance and education. The property tax issue was the issue in play during this special election. Instead of leading with a statement on how her values led her to support equitable and just tax reform, Franks spends the first half of her issue page on property taxes on attacks on Charlie Dean. That violates what I call the General Grant Rule. Grant wanted to know what his commanders were going to do to Robert E. lee, and not hear about what Robert E. Lee had done and was going to do to them.

On property insurance reform, Franks totally missed the boat. Again she leads with an attack on Dean. Her only substantive proposal is to support a national catastrophe fund, something as a Florida state senator, she would have absolutely no control over. Franks missed a great opportunity here to lay out a values based plan for true property insurance reform that could be implemented by state action alone.

Education is clearly the issue closes to Suzan Franks heart. Her issue page on education is considerably longer than either of the other two issues. and here she says this:

I will continue to fight for the values embodied in a quality education

The problem is, she says this in the last sentence of her lengthy statement on education. If you lead voters with your values they will see that you are on their side on the issues. The quote above is a good one in closing. it would have been a great one as an opening.


So what does this tell us about issue strategically? Believe it or not, we actually won in 2006 by being closer to the voters on our values. Voters need to believe that you share their values. If you make voters believe that you will always be guided by your clearly expressed values, even if they disagree with you on an issue, they will know that you are making a principled stand and will respect you for it. The alpha and omega of positions on issues are your values, values, values.

The third leg of our stool is all about the money. In 2006, the R's outspent us by better than 3 to 1 in the governors race. The final numbers are not in on this race, but it looks like that ratio is going to be hugely larger. Money has been rightly called the mothers milk of politics. In state races money is needed for mailers. Mailings are both the most effective and most efficient mass media tool in state an local races. Winning any election requires you to get more of your voters to the polls than the other guy. This is especially true in special elections. In this race, we missed our opportunity to put on a statewide full court fund raising push the moment that a special election was going to be called.

In general we should be raising money the day after an election and keep on raising money right up until the fund raising blackout before an election. This money should go to the state party for use in absentee ballot and other ongoing strategic outreach efforts. It should also be available as seed money for general elections so that our nominee is ready to roll on the first day after the primary. In 2004, Senator Bill Nelson led an effort to do exactly that for our eventual US Senate nominee. While she ultimately lost that very close election, Betty Castor was in much better shape to campaign after the primary than was Jim Davis. Davis was off the air for an entire month after the primary. This gave Charlie Crist an advantage that could not be made up.

In Florida, there are 164 state races. Four of those are statewide, including the Governor. the other 160 are legislative districts. We must think strategically about building our bench and matching our candidates to the districts. We must make values our strategic weapon of choice. Most Americans actually share the progressive values espoused by most Democratic candidates. Once we get individual voters to recognize that fact, getting voters to agree with you on an issue, or agreeing to disagree with respect becomes infinitely easier. And we must do a better job raising money strategically.

Once we get those three legs on our strategic stool shored up, we will be much more likely to write about our electoral victories instead of lamenting on our electoral defeats. Winning is much more fun than losing. I am ready for some big time fun!

SD-3: "What else are they going to lie to them about?"

"Well, they're lying to the folks in Dixie County about their water and their roads. What else are they going to lie to them about?"

These words were written by Beverley Wiskow of Inverness. The target of her ire? The Republican Party of Florida. According to the Gainesville Sun :

Dixie County officials said they were upset and confused about the motives of the Republican Party of Florida this week when it sent out oversized postcards urging residents to vote for Charles Dean for state Senate District 3.

Even local Republican officials were unsure what the mailing was supposed to accomplish.

Seems the RPOF mailed fliers into Dixie County stating that:

Cross City has water "unfit to drink" and so some people are being "forced to buy bottled water."

The fliers went on to say:

that "good, functional roads are a basic need that is just not being addressed in Dixie County."

The problem with these fliers? They are untrue!

So Beverly Winskow wrote to the Gainesville Sun and started her letter with these words:

One voter observed, "Well, they're lying to the folks in Dixie County about their water and their roads. What else are they going to lie to them about?"

Folks, this is a great way to blast back at the Republican smear machine. Cross City City Manager Mike Cassidy said the mailing was inaccurate. Again, per the Gainesville Sun:

(Cross) City and Florida Department of Environmental Protection records show that the city's water is drinkable....Cassidy said, "but our residents deserve the truth in all matters and this has led people to believe the water was undrinkable and that is not true. And no one is being forced to drink bottled water. "

So the RPOF is lying to Dixie County residents about their water. What else are they going to lie to them about? Here is the principle for Democratic candidates. Once you catch the Republicans in a lie, keep hammering it home. If they lied to you about this, what else are they going to lie to you about?

But the Republican Party of Florida was not content to lie about the water in Cross City. They had to go and lie about the roads in Dixie County too. The following was also reported by the Gainesville Sun:

(Dixie) County Manager Arthur Bellot said county officials and the Florida Department of Transportation have absolutely addressed road issues in the county by including money in their 2007-2008 fiscal year budgets for improvements on all of the roads listed in the Republican mailing.

Democratic candidates should make this their mantra

If they lied to you about this, what else are they going to lie to you about?

Candidate Review Wednesday: Overview

This time 4 years ago, I was firmly committed to Florida's favorite son, my former boss, Senator and former Florida Governor Bob Graham. I had taken a look at Howard Dean and liked what I saw. I was not enamored of John Kerry (more on that later) and I thought John Edwards suffered from premature ejaculation (er, uh, candidacy).

This cycle, I am much more conflicted. There is not one candidate who stands head and shoulders above everyone else, in my opinion. Maybe the best candidate isn't even in the race. Maybe the best candidate is ineligible to run again. There are at least two candidates who I would be equally happy to have as my party's nominee. This is the embarrassment of riches we seem to be suffering this year.

Today, I am launching a series of diaries to try and get the fencepost out of my ass. This series is going to be a little bit like examining my navel, something I have successfully avoided doing to this point in my life for the most part. I hope at the end of the day to have developed a coherent reason to support one candidate over all the others.




There are a couple of caveats I should make here. I am going to support the Democratic nominee. Period.

I want to become a paid employee of, or consultant to, the campaign I end up choosing to support. I could repeat my pattern from the last presidential cycle and spend my energy on the Congressional level. That happened after my first choice, Bob Graham, decided he couldn't sustain a viable campaign. This cycle though, I hope I wind up catching on with the ultimate nominee.

There are two top level criteria I am going to use to evaluate the candidates. The first is their ability to win the nomination. The second is their ability to win the general election. You can't have one without the other. That's what happened to Howard Dean in Iowa last cycle. Iowans came to the conclusion that Dean could not win the general. They also came to the mistaken conclusion that John Kerry could, so what do they know?

In my attempts to evaluate candidates chances to win the nomination, I am going to look at these factors:

• Values projected in the Message
• Stance on issues
• Fundraising ability
• Staff competence
• Primary strategy
• Does this candidate make me feel it?

I am going to go back to square one and do my own research on all these factors. I am a devotee of values based decision making, so I am going to start with that navel gazing thing. I am going to have to come up with a set of criteria to evaluate how each candidate's message resonates with my values (That's the first and the last criteria on the list above.) Those criteria are, by their nature, subjective. The other criteria are more objective in nature. At the end of the day, it is going to come down to my gut feeling as to which candidate makes me feel it more.

That's how I intend to proceed. It should be an interesting journey.

Would You Give Money to This Man?

There is an effort under way, quietly, to make an impact on local politics. The goal is to get reasonable people who share progressive values elected to local office. The difference here is to not leave this to chance. This efforts' mission is to identify, nurture and finance these candidates early on in the process.

The business plan, including an initial budget proposal, for this effort has been drafted. Political goals for 2007 have been drafted. Most folks who have been asked about the idea and specific plans have been supportive, in theory.

The issue for this effort, now, is how to turn this theoretical support into concrete support. Unfortunately in realpolitik today, that means money. While many people are supportive of the effort and have added their ideas and encouragement, no one has stepped up to fulfill a financial commitment.

While the effort is designed to be somewhat under the radar, there is a face in the forefront. It is a face that really doesn't seek the spotlight. This might be part of the problem. So what we are going to do here is to describe this face:

• Note: Here's a plea. If you think you know the identity of this person, keep it to yourself. Comments and suggestions are welcome, but please make them generic or issue related, not specific to the individual as much to as to the mission.
• This guy has met and had both private and public discussions with every major Dem presidential candidate for the last three cycles. His history in this area goes back before that, but the current streak goes back to 1996.
• He has travelled extensively with a former Senator and Governor during the Senators' short lived presidential bid. He feels fortunate to be considered a friend of the family. And while he loves the Senator, he thinks the Senators' wife walks on water.
• During these travels with the Senator, he met an independent film maker who happens to have a highly placed mother (currently second in line of presidential succession). Because of this relationship with the daughter, the well placed mother calls the dude by his first name (even when he is not wearing a name tag) and has, from time to time, made her staff available to assist the guy in his various political efforts.
• That brings us to what our guy considers one of his serious drawbacks. Most of his most intimate political experiences have been with unsuccessful efforts. However, he likes to think about Abraham Lincoln and Toby Ziegler. That may seem like an unlikely pairing, but consider this: Neither one had been particularly successful until they hit the big one.
• Our guy has never considered himself particularly creative. However he was informed by someone who has been spectacularly successfully creative that he has it all wrong. This dude perceived in our guy an ability to recognize and act on a good idea when he hears it. While our guy did not consider this particularly creative, his creative friend told him that that is one of the most sought after capabilities amongst advertising and other "creative types". Our guy is still not totally convinced, but he does enjoy hanging out with creative types.
• One of the dude's most cherished values is "community". Because of this, he has a burning desire to add value to the community that he loves so much. This is why he is willing to be the face of the subject effort when his preference is to remain securely in the background.

So there is a thumbnail sketch of our guy. Here are two questions for you:

• Are you supportive of the proposed effort?
• Would you let this dude control your financial contribution to this effort?

I truly am interested in receiving your feedback. Don't hold back. Let me know what you really think.

What Every So Called Political Professional Needs to Know

Do you ever hear a phrase or a saying that just sticks with you? The kind of thing that keeps popping into your head at the weirdest times? Here is the story of one that should be first and foremost in the minds of every one who considers themselves a political professional.

I was standing in this room with a bunch of disgusted Democrats. It was early in 2003. They were still pissed off about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida. And they were absolutely steaming about the governors race that was so badly handled in 2002.

It was the 2000 elections that they were using as a rallying cry. The number 537 played a prominent part in this discussion. There was no crying over the spilt milk of 2002 here. This was all about 2004, and the lessons learned in 2000 and not applied in 2002.

It was a pretty interesting group. There was a County Commissioner whose mother was to run for the US Senate and who is now, herself, a newly minted Congresswoman. There was a former County Commissioner who ran a valiant but unsuccessful Congressional campaign in 2006. The campaign manager for the incumbent Congressman was there. There were some dudes there, but none of us were as impressive as the women in the room.

The matriarch of this group was the mother of the successful attorney who had graciously offered up her home for the evening. One of the interesting things we did that night was to go around the room and offer up our reasons for being a Democrat. That's a story for another time. As we were about to wrap up for the night, the matriarch said she wanted to leave us with something to think about.

Our matriarch was, at that time, a recently retired County Commissioner. She did not stay retired for long. She is now a very successful County Clerk. She wanted to leave us with something that had stuck with her for a very long time. It was something that was told to her by someone we all knew. This fellow was a former teacher and a union leader. He became a Mayor and then a Governor. He wasn't with us that night because he had changed teams in the midst of his rise to political fame and fortune.

There were a lot of people in that room that night who had won, and lost, a lot of elections. But they all nodded when our matriarch relayed this pearl of wisdom to us:

If you have a dozen committed volunteers, you can win any election.

Now those of you who have worked on large campaigns are probably shaking your head at the perceived naivete of that statement. But think about it for a second. This wasn't a statement from some dude who just got elected dog catcher. He had been elected and re-elected as a union leader. He was the mayor of a major city. He was the governor of a significant state. If you still don't get it, maybe you should take up another profession.

At the end of the day, in a close election, what is going to make the difference? In my mind it is the ability to get more of your voters to the polls than the other guy does. In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, 538 more Democratic voters would have changed the history of the world. That's less than 10 votes in each county in Florida. Or for your dozen volunteers, less than 45 successful calls per person.

But the real power of the dozen volunteers is not just the work they do directly. It is the dozen volunteers recruited by each of them, and the dozen volunteers recruited by each of those volunteers. It is the fact that these dozen volunteers believe in you that sustains you. So let's not let these dozen volunteers down again.

Let's not ever lose another election because we did not put enough resources into our ground game. Remember what a difference 538 votes would have made in 2000. For all the mistakes of the Kerry campaign in 2004, they got that lesson, sorta. They got more Democratic votes to the polls than any other candidate in history. Their problem there was that the other guy did better than they did. Who'd a thunk it?

The 2006 election cycle was one that saw many wonderful victories for our team. But I keep thinking about the one we let get away. We faced a daunting challenge. Our opponent would raise and have spent more money on his behalf than in any other campaign in the country that cycle. He had run several statewide races before. This was our guy's first try at statewide office. And we were not going to get close in the money raising department.

Still for all that, we were closing at the end. We could have won this one. So why didn't we? We did not get more of our voters to the polls than the other guy did. At the end of the day that is the only story that matters. Our team made a conscious decision to put as much of the money as they possibly could into television. It's a huge state after all. You can't win statewide in Florida playing retail politics they said.

Well, they were wrong. You can do it. One of our greatest campaigners walked throughout the entire state. Another went out and spent days working ordinary jobs with ordinary people. That's retail politics folks. And ground is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. But that is where you leverage those 12 committed volunteers. You pay your organizers to look after their care and feeding and to give them some direction. Then you get out of the way and let them do their thing.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement. Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant.

Florida Knows How to Fuck Up Elections

Aha, I bet you thought that this diary was going to be about the FL-13 undervote fiasco or maybe the 2000 Presidential election, um, er selection of the Chimp in Chief. Well, you might be right.

This time, Florida is aiming to fuck up the 2008 Presidential election. How can they aim to do that so soon, you ask? Well, actually Florida is aiming to fuck up the 2008 Presidential Primary elections, which really aren't that far away.

So, how is Florida going to do this, you ask? Is it going to be the electronic equivalent of the infamous butterfly ballots as is going on in FL-13 now (maybe)? The electronic version of the hanging chad, which is going on now in FL-13 (maybe)?

Well, if you really want to know...


Florida's Goper dominated state legislature is making serious noises about moving up Florida's Presidential Primary from early March to well, we don't exactly know. But that is not stopping our state legislative leaders from making loud clucking sounds about it.

The Times political editor Adam Smith (shouldn't he be the economics editor or something?) also reports today

That (the) move has bipartisan support in Tallahassee, though the national parties bar most states from holding primaries before the first week of February. Florida could lose some delegates at their national convention if they buck the national parties, but the state still could be the first huge primary prize on the calendar - delivering more delegates than Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina combined.

So, now they are not only screwing up the Presidential Primary calendar, they are potentially screwing up the state's major parties delegate counts at the National Conventions.

More from the St. Petersburg Times

"Sen. Pruitt (incoming President of the Florida Senate) understands this is a priority of (incoming) Speaker (Mario) Rubio," spokeswoman Kathy Mears said of an early primary. "He is very receptive to the idea and wants to be of assistance, and he believes this would be a good change for Florida."

The Times also reports today

Not only are state legislative leaders working on moving Florida's primary to be one of the earliest in the country, but the state GOP is planning a straw vote convention for October 2007.

Yup, a straw poll in October of 2007. Now it's really geting closer.
Now straw polls can be a lot of fun for the state convention delegates. The Florida Democratic Party wanted to have one at their convention in December 2003, but were bribed / scared off the idea by the DNC. Why would the DNC do that, you ask?
Well, the Presidential pretenders, um, er contenders didn't want to have to expend the resources, both in money and staffers to organize the convention delegates for what is really a meaningless beauty contest. Particulary so close to Iowa and New Hampshire.

But the straw poll idea also has support from some other notables

Democrats held one ,,,before the 1992 race. Bill Clinton, ... credited the Florida contest with playing a crucial role in his winning the nomination.

So, maybe, just maybe, Florida is not going to fuck up the 2008 Presidential election after all. Stay tuned.