Mitch Perry
Although they were already scheduled to speak on Saturday morning, three of the four Republicans running for the Senate in Florida took advantage of an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with dozens of Republican Party chairs throughout the Sunshine State on Friday night at the Republican Party of Florida’s summer quarterly meeting in Tampa (David Jolly was busy attending to his congressional duties and wasn’t present).
Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who has been blasted by Democrats an being an unproductive figurehead in his job as Lieutenant Governor, began his remarks by using his stature as the man a heart beat away as the leader of Florida to give a quick update on the status of Tropical Storm Erika.
He said that while it would be a “significant rain event” for Tampa Bay area residents, “The further left it goes, the weaker it gets – kind of like the Democratic Party,” which elicited large guffaws from those in the audience who hadn’t already read that he had uttered the line earlier in the day.
The man known as “CLC” then went on to rag on the federal government, saying that it had gotten out of control and made the country “less special.” He said he was running for Senate because he was “fed up” with Washington D.C., and instead of talking about what he might do as Senator, boasted about his proven ability to win, referring to how as a Republican he was able to win four terms in his Miami-Dade County House district that twice voted for Barack Obama, and how he was part of a winning ticket that wasn’t expected to defeat Charlie Crist in the 2014 gubernatorial election.
Jacksonville Congress Ron DeSantis immediately declared that the 2016 election was a referendum on the national character of the body politic – “What kind of people are we?” he asked. “Are we a self-governing people that live under a government where people go to Washington and serve, or are we basically a centralized government, in which an elite ruling class governs over everybody, but lives under different rules themselves.”
He then went on to blast Hillary Clinton for her issues with using a personal email server while serving as Secretary of State.
DeSantis served in Iraq as a Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Navy. He said that if he had sent classified material while on active duty using a private email, “I would have lost my job, been court-martialed, and I likely would have done time at Fort Leavenworth.”
“She is not above the law, and nobody should be above the law in the United States,” he added, getting a large round of applause.
Former military veteran and CIA officer Todd Wilcox announced that he would be self-financing his campaign for the first six month, “because I’ve been that successful and I believe that much in America.”
Wilcox is the only announced Republican in the race who is not a politician or an attorney. And he wears that distinction like a badge of honor..
Niger Innis, the national spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), kicked off the meeting with a half-hour address, and spoke about how Republicans should not cede the black vote to Democrats.
Innis blasted the Black Lives Matter movement, and criticized Democrats and Republicans who have met with members of that activist group – including Jeb Bush, though he did not mention him by name (Bush met with the group earlier this month).
Innis message is to remind his audience that they are the party of Lincoln – in fact, he says, they were created outright to oppose slavery in the U.S.
“Our party was created to liberate slaves!” he proclaimed at the conclusion of his address. “Don’t’ forget that. And we’re now created to liberate Americans.”
Sharon Day, the Republican National Co-Chair, talked about the party’s presidential chances in 2016, mocking the Democrats running, beginning with front-runner Hillary Clinton. Day excitedly mentioned Thursday’s Quinnipiac poll that showed that the number one word associated with the former secretary of state was “liar.”
She deliciously tore apart Bernie Sanders (for being a socialist), Martin O’Malley (for leaving such a poor legacy in a blue state that Maryland ended up electing a Republican to succeed him) and especially Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican/independent Senator/Governor of Rhode Island for his single-issue platform of bring the metric system to the U.S. “He’s not concerned with the economy, no. He’s concerned with going from inches to centimeters. Really.”
That was pretty funny, actually.
The RPOF summer quarterly meeting resumes on Saturday.
