Rick Scott, govenor of the tea party

From TBO.com

by Joe O'Neil

When it comes to Gov. Rick Scott, there is, as we've seen, no middle ground. It's zero-sum city.

To his followers, he is the no-nonsense, noncareer politician with solid tea party credentials who had a jobs plan and a taxpayer-friendly agenda. He reminded everyone that government, to quote Ronald Reagan, was the "problem." The bigger the badder.

Scott backers loved that he ran against a "socialist" president, as well as for lower taxes and less regulation. He also wasn't afraid to put the liberal, gotcha media in its place. When the subject was infrastructure, Scott made it clear that he meant ports, not rails. Jobs mattered most, he underscored, when they were in the private sector. Budgets were there for the cutting. Waste would be found and given the heave ho. No time like the present, he said in mantra-like fashion, to return to basics, grow Florida with business incentives and "get to work."

For the opposition, gashed budgets gored more than "earmark" oxen. Education, the environment and smart growth, for example, were hardly fringe constituencies. Privatization was not a synonym for panacea. Transparency in government was turning into an oxymoron. The elimination of some 4,500 state jobs during double-digit unemployment seemed to mock the "jobs budget" label. Giving back high-speed rail billions to the feds will forever stick in the megalopolis craw of Interstate 4-relegated Orlando and Tampa.

To the other side, Gov. Scott will always be reviled for spending $70 million to buy his election and for being tainted by Medicare fraud. He will continue to take ad hominem hits for looking like Skeletor, Count Voldemort or Bailiff Bull.

And yet.

While the middle ground remains an ideological -- and increasingly personal -- sinkhole, the governor still has had a theoretical card to play. The begrudging-respect card. The track record of most politicians is not one of doing what they say -- especially when there's mounting opposition to what they've been saying. Scott didn't blink.

So the "'I-don't-govern-based-on-polls'-is-more-than-rhetoric" card was available. Along with the "I-will-take-the-personal-short-term hits-to-get-all-of-us-to-where-we-need-to-be-in-the-long-term" card. As well as the "I'm-not-two-faced, otherwise-why-would-I-be-wearing-this-one?" card. And, ultimately, the "take-the-heat-and-show-some-guts" card.

But that opportunity, it appears, has passed.

• Otherwise, Scott would not have gone to that Eustis tea party rally in February to propose his version of the budget. Since when is an ideological panderfest an appropriate venue for how everybody's money is to be spent?

•Otherwise, he would not have gone to The Villages, that prototypical conservative retirement community in central Florida, to formally sign the $69.1 billion 2011-12 state budget. In so doing, he acquiesced to doing the signing in The Villages' (Republican Party of Florida-rented) town square at a "private event." Since when is party affiliation a qualification to witness the public's business? Such that sheriff's deputies morphed into gubernatorial goon squads to deny entrance to nonacolytes and nontrue believers.

•Otherwise, Scott (and the Republican Party of Florida) would not have conspired to go robo later that same day with automatic "spoofed" calls to voters to partisanly spin Scott's budget. Including the disingenuous take of diverting "special interest waste" into much worthier causes -- such as education. And not including the $370 million in vilified stimulus funds stashed in the budget. I know, I got one of those self-congratulatory paeans.

•Otherwise, he would have stayed in Tallahassee, looked Floridians -- and their surrogates -- in the eye, signed the budget with the pomp-free conviction of one who largely did what he said he would do and accepted the role of naysayers as well as yeasayers. Instead he did cocooned road shows for the benefit of those who constitute his 29 percent popularity rate. How do you respect that?

And in so doing, he likely signaled that more us-vs.-them, partisan wagon-circling will follow -- and likely assured that 29 percent will probably be a high-water mark.

http://www2.tbo.com/news/community-news/2011/jun/01/gov-scott-still-had-a-card-to-play-ar-234203/