Florida’s Republican Party used to be led by reasonable people who defended conservative principles, people like U.S. Rep. Lou Frey, Gov. Jeb Bush., Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings and state Sen. Jim King.
The Florida GOP looks more like an extremist group these days than a political party.
Today’s radicalized party is led by a host of MAGA militants who gave life to Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election and contributed to last week’s attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Their words, actions or complicit silence encouraged the frenzy that culminated with a mob storming the U.S. Capitol, screaming for the blood of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
State Republican leaders could have found the courage to denounce the accusations of an election stolen from Donald Trump as the lies they were, disproved by multiple recounts, courts and investigations.
They didn’t. GOP leaders chose party over country, and the calamitous results fall directly on them.
It’s time to call out some of the key players:
—Sen. Rick Scott. The former governor turned U.S. senator said minutes before the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election that he would object to the Biden electors from Pennsylvania. Scott left the door open to objecting to electors from other states.
In his statement, Scott stoked the resentment by calling the impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019 “a political coup attempt …”
Scott never explained why voters were questioning the election’s outcome. It’s because Trump, Scott and much of the GOP had spent the last two months sowing doubt, despite the absence of any credible evidence. They gathered the wood, poured on the gasoline, struck the match and then wondered why there was a fire.
After the insurrection had been put down, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said this: The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth.” Amen, senator.
Later that night, Scott voted to toss out the election results in Pennsylvania, again offering his endorsement of the stolen-election lie.
In the days since, Scott has appeared more distraught over Twitter closing Trump’s account than the attempted overthrow of the U.S. government by Trump’s supporters.
Scott has disgraced himself, his office and his nation.
—Sen. Marco Rubio. Like Scott, Rubio cast doubt on the election’s validity, usually under the guise of supporting Trump’s right to file lawsuits challenging the results.
That stand might have been more principled if, after the courts kept throwing cases out because they had no merit, Rubio had loudly and forcefully acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden’s win and denounced the lies Trump and his allies were telling.
Instead, like Scott and the rest of Florida’s GOP, he remained silent — even after Trump called the Georgia secretary of state and tried to browbeat him into overturning Biden’s win there.
Going into Jan. 6, Rubio was similarly mum about whether he would support objections to Biden electors from states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Rubio had every chance to set the record straight and take the wind out of Trump’s sails. Rubio didn’t, betraying his oath and his fellow Americans and, once again, revealing his fecklessness as a leader.
On Sunday, Rubio made a halfhearted pass at holding Trump accountable, telling Fox News, “I will say the president does bear some responsibility here.” Rubio stopped far short of where he should have gone in explicitly condemning Trump for lying to the public and inciting the mob.
The senator was far more critical in condemning President-elect Biden for not doing enough to unify the nation. Biden, not Trump.
If not for Rick Scott, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, Rubio might be the worst senator in the United States.
—Rep. Matt Gaetz. Gaetz has been one of the most prolific supporters of the big lie about a stolen election.
After the insurrectionists had been cleared out on Jan. 6 and debate had resumed, Gaetz had a new lie to tell during his floor speech — that antifa had a role in the violence. His claim, based on a now-retracted article in the Washington Times, has been debunked by the FBI but, thanks to Gaetz, the lie has spread like a virus. And Gaetz still has posted on his Twitter page the floor speech where he spread the antifa lie.
Gaetz — who spent more time whining about lost Twitter followers than be did about lost lives at the Capitol — will never stop telling the election lie, never stop fomenting sedition. The U.S. representative from the Florida Panhandle is the face of the state's new radicalized Republican Party.
—The rest of Florida’s GOP U.S. House delegation. With just two exceptions (Michael Waltz and Vern Buchanan), the entire GOP delegation present at last week’s congressional session signaled their desire to overturn the election by rejecting Biden electors in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Given the opportunity, they likely would have gone along with more states so they could swing the result to the loser, Donald Trump.
In the days after the attack, GOP representatives like Brian Mast, Dan Webster, John Rutherford and Neal Dunn offered tepid denunciations of the violence but could never bring themselves to write or utter the name of the person who, because of his words and actions over the months and years, is directly responsible for what happened.
Since they don’t have the courage to speak his name, allow us: Donald Trump.
—State Sen. Joe Gruters. He’s the head of the Republican Party of Florida and a true Trump acolyte. On Dec. 14, when Gruters cast his vote as a Florida elector for Trump, he posted the news on Twitter along with #StoptheSteal, a hashtag promoting the big lie about a stolen election.
Before the tragedy of Jan. 6, Gruters also urged Facebook followers to contact a Sarasota Republican activist who was organizing buses that would take Trump supporters to Washington for the rally that would turn into an attempted overthrow of the government.
Local party organizations are even more radical under Gruters’ leadership.
Linda Trocine, chairman of the Seminole County Republican Party, has tweeted no fewer than five times the claim that antifa is responsible for overrunning the Capitol, even though the FBI says that’s not true. Are Seminole County’s Republicans OK with that?
More than two weeks after the November election, Orange County Republican Party Chairman Charles Hart submitted a guest column to the Sentinel stating as fact that Trump had “rightfully won” the election. The column was not published because his statement was a lie.
If these are the local party leaders, no wonder so many Florida Republicans can’t tell truth from fiction.
—Rep. Anthony Sabatini. The party’s most disgusting example of radicalism represents a portion of Lake County (and serves as a captain in the Florida National Guard). Sabatini is a prolific tweeter who has yet to offer even a perfunctory denunciation of the insurrection.
Nor has he expressed sympathy for the Capitol Police officer who died defending his country, though Sabatini has conveyed regret about the Trump supporter shot while trying to overthrow it.
We have no doubt that some Florida Republicans — particularly its leaders — are pleased with what the party has become.
We see it as a tragic fall from grace, from a time when people of good will and dignity, who possessed real conservative values, were the party’s leaders.
They were Republicans who put country over party, and who would not have fallen under the spell of a would-be tyrant like Donald Trump.
Florida can only hope men and women like that will once again become the soul of the party one day.
