March 29, 2024

GOP Strategy

Trojan Donkey?

Republicans make nice, Dems love it, but is all what it seems?

Neil Skene | 4/1/2007


Art: Jason Morton

Did the Democrats take over Florida while we weren't looking?

We know about Gov. Charlie Crist, his appointment of Democrats, his moderate tone, his palpable determination to be "not Jeb Bush" in style and even policy. Democrats have been loving the new governor.

And when you listen to House Speaker Marco Rubio, you might think you're back in the New Deal or the '60s' War on Poverty. He talks about helping kids in dire poverty and bad neighborhoods with non-functional families. "No child on Earth can overcome five strikes all by themselves," he says. "And if we don't try (to help), we're just another rich country with a big army."

In a Capital Tiger Bay Club speech in mid- February, Republican Rubio lauded the leadership of Democratic icon Franklin Roosevelt, who "became very unpopular right before the war" when "isolationists" -- that would be a lot of Republicans and conservative Democrats -- opposed even helping Great Britain. "This country used to have leadership," Rubio said. "They used to confront the issues of their time and defeat them no matter what they were."

What's happening here? Have Florida Republicans, with serial governorships and two-thirds of the Legislature, been stampeded by residual electoral angst into embracing Democratic philosophy even as Democrats themselves grope for a political center that seems always beyond their fingertips?

Or are Florida Democrats welcoming a Trojan horse? Have Republicans in Florida, unlike Florida Democrats or either national party, simply settled on the way to become the centrist majority party by spinning their conservative programs into Democratic themes? Is the Republican leadership emphasizing some universally popular themes -- quality education, economic mobility, business growth, lower property taxes -- and bypassing important, difficult issues that are more challenging to either their new populism or their business base? As for appointing Democrats, it should be apparent that giving the Department of Children and Families to a Democrat is like the Indians giving tobacco to the Pilgrims. It seems nice, but it really isn't good for them.

Despite a pedantic openingday speech last November, Rubio generally wows his audiences. He could be a national superstar. He's funny, inspiring, thoughtful, handsome and articulate. "We are a society obsessed with public opinion," he says. "We equate public opinion with what's right or wrong in the world. Right or wrong has never been popular. ... I am willing to be judged 20 years from now, not 20 minutes from now."

Yet he says nothing really courageous. He hasn't asked for public sacrifice in any form, including taxation. He hasn't declared that people who live on the water should bear responsibility for their hurricane losses. He didn't even say how to organize and finance the "world-class education" he thinks Florida should have. Legislators love to pass programs with a few standards and goals and leave the hard problems to the very bureaucrats they rail against. Is that what we're going to do with these bipartisan visions?

So far, the Republican leaders -- that includes Crist and Senate President Ken Pruitt -- are looking pretty good on the 20-minute standard but have yet to press an unpopular cause that is both right and significant. Let's be clear: Lend-lease before World War II was an act of political courage. Pursuing tax cuts is not. Being for civil rights and against poverty in 1965 was courageous. Marching in Black History Month parades and supporting Pre-K programs in 2007 is not. Eliminating a major activity of government would be courageous, or at least creative. Making appointments to an efficiency commission is neither.

Republicans smacked insurers around in January, but Republicans also have been ardent defenders of the insurance industry in all kinds of ways, most notably in the persistent narrowing of the rights of citizens to sue for personal injury and collect damages. They succeeded in making "tort reform" a populist cause by focusing on million-dollar verdicts, but the movement has sidetracked thousands of smaller lawsuits by ordinary people. Then a property insurance revolt comes around, and Rubio is just delighted that the people took this issue away from the insurance companies. "The single biggest difference between this year and every other year," he says, "is that people from real life were in our face saying you must do something about this."

Rubio is right about the tragic decline in civic engagement, but his whole point about leadership seems to be that you do the right thing when nobody's looking, or when everyone seems against you.

Test of time

Let's examine an idea that might shatter the Kum-Bah-Yah moderation.

Nobody much was watching in February when two experts told a state commission that the Florida Keys and chunks of Miami-Dade County could be under the Atlantic before the end of this century because of rising sea levels. "Climate change is arguably the biggest threat to sustainability of Florida," said futurist Clement Bezold in a presentation to the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida. And because of its long coastline, "Florida is in the unusual position of being the state with the most to lose from climate change and is doing the least about it."

Meanwhile, nine coal plants are in some stage of planning by Florida utilities -- including plants at the edge of the Everglades.

This is where government actually matters. The Florida Public Service Commission has to authorize any generating plant by certifying that it is economically feasible. But the PSC's political appointees have rebuffed environmental issues because their jurisdiction is economic. Never mind that environmental issues are economic ones. Emissions have tangential costs, such as healthcare. Besides healthcare and similar indirect costs, suppose that Congress, reacting to some future surge of concern over pollution and global warming, imposes a stiff "carbon tax" that renders coal a much more expensive fuel to use.

Over in Texas, the huge power company Texas Utilities was proposing to build as many as 11 coal-fired plants in the next few years. Then, some private-equity firms -- Kohlberg Kravis, Goldman Sachs and others -- agreed to buy the company. Their plan is to drop the coal plants and go with "green" generation. These are cold-eyed capitalists who will have a lot of acquisition debt to service.

If they think traditional coal generation is a bad business risk, shouldn't Florida be thinking about that? But the PSC lacks intellectual curiosity and, like any government agency, avoids political risk. No Republican officeholder seems interested. Where are those forward-looking courageous thinkers Rubio yearns for? Is this too "out there" for consensus-driven Republicans? How will we assess these politicians in 20 years if we're in political panic because the Florida Keys seem destined to become the Wet Tortugas?

Maybe we could have a special session then.

Lip service?

It's not that this Kum-Bah-Yah ambience is a bad thing. The tone of civility and mutual regard is like a rainbow after a storm.

But a legislative consensus is different from hard problem-solving. The test is what really changes.

Tags: Politics & Law, North Central, Government/Politics & Law

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