Steve Parkhurst in Tampa Tribune About Special Elections

 

District 13 campaigns must work around the holidays

By Kate Bradshaw | Tribune Staff
Published: November 29, 2013

The special election to fill the late C.W. “Bill” Young’s seat in Congress is riddled with numerous challenges for the candidates, not the least of which is having to campaign during the holidays.

The time frame for the election is likely to prove a strong dynamic in the race. Three Republicans — lobbyist and former Young aide David Jolly, state representative and former South Pasadena Mayor Kathleen Peters, and retired Marine Gen. Mark Bircher, a political newcomer — will square off in the Jan. 14 primary for the District 13 seat. The winner will face former state chief financial officer and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink in the March 11 special election.

Not that holiday campaigning is unprecedented. Scott Brown, the former Republican senator from Massachusetts, prevailed in a January special election in 2010 to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat after his death. And presidential hopefuls trudge out to Iowa in January for the early caucuses there.

Nevertheless, campaigning during the holidays is unusual and presents candidates with distinct challenges.

It’s a time when money is scarce, schedules are tight and negative campaigning doesn’t fly. People are supposed to set their grudges aside and find common ground this time of year — even in Washington.

“Everybody’s just cordial. It’s different,” said Steve Parkhurst, a consultant with GPH Consulting, a national political consulting firm that works with Republican candidates. “You’ve got good tidings and joy and all of that going on.”

Commercials smearing another candidate could come across as tacky when sandwiched between ads thick with messages of joy and peace.

“Everybody can find something nice to say to everyone else that time of year,” Parkhurst said. “You have to have a level of sensitivity.”

That’s why candidates might be better off highlighting their own strengths rather than tearing down opponents in December.

“People aren’t paying that much attention and, I think, people find it tacky,” Chris Akins, of Akins Campaign Strategy in Tallahassee, said in an email.

“It simply isn’t the time to campaign, outside [of] heartfelt and genuine wishes for happy holidays. … For the campaigning that does occur, I generally advise to dial back the rhetoric and focus on what’s been accomplished and how it helps the community at large — policies that benefit everyone.”

Come Jan. 2, the barbs can come out, said Abby Livingston, a writer for Washington political blog Roll Call, who is covering the District 13 race. By then, though, it may be too late for candidates in the primary.

“It would be a sprint to the finish,” she said.

Especially considering that early voting in the District 13 race starts on Jan. 4.

By then, mail ballots for the primary will also be trickling in. Pinellas County Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark has been encouraging absentee voting in recent years. Absentee ballots went out to overseas and military voters Wednesday, and they go out to local absentee voters on Dec. 10.

Candidates need to have their message out to voters by the start of the year, though, Parkhurst said.

“You have to have your radio ads done, your TV ads done, and your direct mail has to be pretty much out the door by that time,” he said.

Getting the message out could also prove more difficult in the District 13 special election than it would in a normal election cycle.

For one, advertising rates during the holidays can be exorbitant, given that campaigns are often competing with major retailers for pricey commercial slots over the holidays.

Raising money for those ads can also be tough.

“It’s notoriously difficult … to raise money during this time,” Livingston said. “That’s a time when people are tight with their budgets. They’d probably prefer to give their kids something nice for Christmas rather than give a candidate money for an ad for TV. It’s a harder sell.”

Organizing fundraisers to pay for that advertising can be tough as well, but not impossible, Akins said.

“An organized fundraiser might be hard to pull off, but calling your reliable donors and meeting with small groups is certainly doable,” he said. “Essentially, I might not organize a large public fundraiser, but I’d certainly consider using a week or two right after Thanksgiving and early December to get my regulars on board and meet with prospects and keep it low-key.”

As would be true of any truncated election cycle, top contenders in the District 13 race will have strong name recognition and fundraising ability. In the cases of Jolly and Peters — with Peters having the name recognition and Jolly having the financial resources — campaigning around the holidays means reaching out directly to the right voters — except on the major holidays, when most people don’t want to hear about politics.

“Special elections are always especially impacted by turnout, or sometimes lack thereof,” said Tallahassee GOP political consultant Sarah Bascom, who is serving as the Jolly campaign’s communications director. “With this race being around the holidays, you have to microtarget and be very strategic in your outreach. I know for the Jolly campaign, it has been and will continue to be a 24/7 campaign, and no stone will go unturned.”

The original story can be found here.

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What Responsible Government Looks Like

By Joe Gruters

Gov. Rick Scott is once again modeling how good, responsible government works.

The improving state economy, despite fighting the headwinds of an anemic national economy, will mean billions more dollars flowing into Tallahassee’s coffers for next year. The way government and politicians normally work, that happy news would mean turning the spending spigot wide open and spending all that new money before it’s collected.

That’s how politicians create popularity for themselves, making sure bridges and roads and other spending goodies are doled out in their districts. But that is also how government gets fat and sloppy and wasteful. There is no incentive to improve efficiencies and be careful with the taxpayers’ money because more keeps pumping in.

But thankfully that is not the way Scott operates coming from a hugely successful private sector career.

Scott is tasking each department in state government to find areas to cut back to save $100 million from existing operations. It is purposeful pressure to create efficiencies and save taxpayer’s money, even if it does not buy friends. Government-watchers find this type of thinking bizarre. Private-sector folks do not.

“Every agency should be able to find efficiencies,” Scott told The Florida Current. “We’ll do the same thing. We’ll review every contract, we’ll look at office space, we’ll look at all the services we buy, we’ll look at can we help our employees become more efficient in what they do every day.”

Scott is doing exactly what he promised to do and Floridians elected him to do. And he is doing it effectively.

Total state debt has fallen $3.5 billion since Scott took office, while new debt has declined from more than $6 billion in the two years before Scott was sworn in to less than $1.5 billion after his first two years in office.

Further, Scott says he does not want the state to incur any new debt in road building, land buying or school building without “specific and accountable returns on investment for taxpayers.” Basically, you have to make the case, not just want it.

That is not an unreasonable bar when spending other people’s money, which is what government does. And that is fiscal discipline that was sorely lacking in his predecessor, Charlie Crist, who while a Democrat now, spent taxpayer money like a Democrat all along.

Let’s remember that a big part of the reason for the new money flowing into the state coffers is because of Scott’s ceaseless efforts to make the state more attractive to outside companies to move here and more competitive for existing companies to start up and grow here. Those efforts have resulted in 365,000 private-sector jobs gained since he took office.

But more needs to be done. To that end, Scott is planning to cut taxes by another $500 million. The specifics are not out yet, but we can be sure they will be cuts to make the state more competitive.

The more competitive the state is, the stronger the economy will be, the more jobs will be created and the more taxes will flow into Tallahassee.

And that is how good government works for everyone.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

DC Deadlock

By Joe Gruters

Nothing like watching malicious ineptitude at a staggering level in Washington, D.C. make us grateful for a responsible, functioning, productive state government in Tallahassee.

And by “functioning,” we mean:

• A government that gets out of the way of citizens and protects the rights of all its residents to pursue dreams in business, with private property, in religious activity;

• A government that protects rights rather than continually erodes them;

• A government that allows its citizens to protect themselves;

• A government that does not nanny every Floridian as though we are incapable toddlers, but expects a certain degree of personal responsibility;

• A government that at least tries to keep dangerous criminals off the streets and aggressively goes after pill mills, bath salts, drug dealers, gangs and human traffickers;

• A government that attempts to ensure only legal voters cast ballots in a democracy instead of pursing policies that will ensure voter fraud on a broad scale;

• A government that actually is open, transparent and in the sunshine, not one that just blathers on about it but consistently acts in secret;

• A government that is reducing its onerous drag on the productive and the law-abiding;

• A government that spends at most only the money that it brings in and lives within its budget!

That is a functioning government.

The non-functioning part of what is going on in D.C. right now is not that there is a government shutdown or a looming debt ceiling. Those are only symptoms that have come about because of a government that is aloof, elitist and not answerable to the American people, aided and abetted by a Beltway media establishment that has lost in watchdog ways.

What should be crystal clear is that this “crisis” has resulted from a government led by Democrats that is incapable of restraining spending. In the sequestration, we are still spending far more than we bring in. Now, in the quasi, kind of, sort of, partial government shutdown and attack on veterans, Democrats refuse to negotiate on anything until they get everything.

That is dysfunctional because it is utterly irresponsible and in opposition to the best interests of the American people, and has been for many years.

Florida can’t save the union, but at least it is doing things right for the state in every measurable category. And the reason is simple: Florida is run on conservative principles led by a competent Gov. Rick Scott. D.C. is run on liberal principles led by a with less-than-competent President Obama.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Democrats Raise Sarasotans Taxes; Deny Self-defense Rights

By Joe Gruters

One thing is now perfectly clear for all to see: Partisan politics are alive and kicking in Sarasota government.

Within a few days, the Sarasota City Commission voted to raise taxes in a weak economy and then to urge the Florida Legislature to repeal the Stand Your Ground law. Those were both 3-2 votes and they were along party lines.

But wait, you say, you thought city elections were nonpartisan? Think again. That’s a ruse by the minority party in our county to try to win elections. You simply cannot get rid of partisanship simply by obfuscating party affiliation with a different label.

Worldviews matter. And the parties roughly represent those world views.

But Democrats want to obscure those worldviews by making county elections “nonpartisan” for one reason: There are 122,000 registered Republicans in Sarasota County and only 89,000 registered Democrats.

So first, the city commission voted 3-2 to increase taxes by 8.5% even though property values are shooting up and putting more money in the city’s coffers without the tax rate increase. The combination will mean a much higher tax bill for city residents.

The three Democrats on the commission said the city was so cash-strapped that it had no choice but to raise taxes on struggling families in the Obama economy, even while increasing property values were already going to raise tax bills.

And yet they found $500,000 for their homeless program — more than one-third of the money the tax rate increase is expected to raise.

And people say there is not a left-right divide on city issues? That’s just not honest.

And then, the same three Democrats were the majority vote to urge the Legislature to repeal Stand Your Ground.

Of course, this comes after George Zimmerman was unanimously acquitted by a jury in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin — a trial in which Stand Your Ground played no role. The trial verdict was merely a whipped-up ruse with which to further erode the rights of law-abiding citizens and tip the scales to the criminals and thugs.

Democrat Commissioner Suzanne Atwell tried to back-peddle after the vote and the public outcry, saying her vote was to have a “conversation about a highly charged issue.” She told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “I just want to start a conversation.”

Right, because no one had been talking about Stand Your Ground until the city commission brought it up. How disingenuous, and weak.

Newly-elected Democrat Commissioner Susan Chapman also walked it back a bit, saying her vote was to “revisit” the issue.

But here’s the language: “The City Commission requests that the State Legislature repeal the Stand Your Ground statute and establish a more civil approach to governance than afforded under the current statute.”

They voted to have the Legislature repeal the law, not revisit a conversation.

So for the record, the Democrats who voted to raise your taxes and deny your self-defense rights were:

• Vice Mayor Willie Shaw, Willie.Shaw@sarasotagov.com

• Commissioner Suzanne Atwell, Suzanne.Atwell@sarasotagov.com

• Commissioner Susan Chapman, Susan.Chapman@sarasotagov.com

The Republicans who supported lower taxes on hard-working Sarasotans and to maintain self-defense rights were:

• Mayor Shannon Snyder, Shannon.Snyder@sarasotagov.com

• Commissioner Paul Caragiulo, Paul.Caragiulo@sarasotagov.com

Let them know how you feel about their votes. And never forget that our core principles are represented in the Republican Party, and attempts eliminate that is an attempt to eliminate our core principles from triumphing.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Divisive and Dividing, But Not Conquering!

By Joe Gruters

It is distressing to see the disingenuousness of the Democrat Party leadership nationally and in Florida. Stoking the fires of racial division has been a favorite past time for liberals and Democrat for years. But the way they have mainstreamed this divisiveness is setting up the nation for continual backwards movement in race relations.

Alas, and too unknown, this really has been the Democrat Party standard for nearly 200 years. Republicans need to be armed and respond for the good of the country.

As a brief history lesson, the Republican Party was born to represent the anti-slavery sentiments before the Civil War. It was the abolitionist party. The Democrat Party was the slavery party and has fought equitable race relations ever since. Segregation in the South was perpetuated and defended completely by Democrats.

It was a Republican president that sent in the National Guard to enforce integration in Arkansas. It was Republicans who pushed for the Civil Rights legislation of the 1950s and 60s and voted for it in far greater percentages than Democrats. It was Democrats who created affirmative action, quotas and set-asides all based on race.

Republicans have always held the vision that blacks should be just like all other Americans, free to rise and fall on their own efforts, integrated into the great melting pot that has been America — at least until Democrats began Balkanizing it by melatonin and special interests. Democrats want blacks to remember they are blacks and they are being held down by the white man — not the Democrat white man, of course — and that they need help from white Democrats. Forever. Just enough handouts to keep them coming back, but never free.

The great lie is that Democrats are painted as fighting for African-Americans when every program and speech they give serves to keep American blacks down and poor and reliant on the magnanimous hand of government. Detroit, ruled by Democrats for half a century, is probably the best example of this.

It becomes easy to understand why blacks who have escaped the keep-them-down Democrat mentality have come to calling it the “Democrat Plantation.” Democrats make blacks beholden to them and ask for unswerving loyalty in return. But more and more high-profile blacks are seeing the lie and turning to the party of freedom, such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson; Professor Thomas Sowell; Professor Shelby Steele; Professor Walter Williams; Herman Cain; Condoleeza Rice and Ward Connerly, to name a few.

It’s been well pointed out, but it is so factually, blatantly true: If the Democrats and their race hucksters were really interested in young black men, they would be working overtime to diminish the black on black crime that is epidemic in our major cities, and completely re-hauling the utter failure of inner-city schooling.

But they do nothing except push the same, intellectually bankrupt ideas that have fed the crime wave. Basically, they only care if there is a racial component. And black on black doesn’t have one.

With statistics slapping them in the face, the division now has pivoted to eliminating Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. This has one purpose —to keep the racial division whipped up. Because it certainly is not to benefit blacks in Florida as, again, the facts are not aligned with their actions.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Further, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white. Clearly, factually, blacks have benefitted more form the Stand Your Ground law than whites.

So do Democrats really want to help blacks? The facts say “no.” But they do want to continue fanning racial divisiveness.

Republicans offer a clear alternative on this critical issue. It needs to be articulated by all of us.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Republican Party of Florida Greets Obama

By Steve Parkhurst

The Republican Party of Florida has run a great full-page ad in a local Jacksonville newspaper today to greet the current President. The ad promotes the great work done by Governor Rick Scott on jobs and the economy in Florida.

Kudos to the Florida GOP.

Governor Scott Is On The Rise

By Joe Gruters

Not even relentlessly negative media coverage is stopping Floridians from seeing the tangible value of having Rick Scott for governor.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that Scott’s approval rating continuing to grow by hitting an all-time high of 43%, up steadily from the low of 29% in 2011. His approval and disapproval ratings are essentially even now.

While his opponents paint his re-election as a steep uphill battle, his approval ratings are flowing against that narrative. It was his unpopularity driving those speculations. But he is popularity keeps rising, and probably will continue to.

It’s not surprising. Scott was elected to grow the economy and keep state government living within its means. He kept both promises with tough and unpopular spending cuts in the first year, coupled with tax cuts that he then used to go out and pitch the state.

He has worked tirelessly, personally calling CEOs around the country to pitch Florida’s economic and quality of life benefits while going abroad on trade missions to our best trade partners in South America and Europe.

The result?

Jobs up, taxes down, state debt down and Floridians better off. It’s that simple.

Moody Investor Services rated Florida Aa1 with a stable outlook even though it “was one of hardest hit states in the recent recession, with unemployment spiking to 11.4%.” Unemployment is now down to 7.1%, a half of a percentage point below the national average, which was lower than Florida’s when Scott came into office.

The report gives Florida high marks for its fiscal discipline.

According to Moody’s Analytics, Florida’s 2013 employment growth is expected to increase 1.9% — again, far surpassing the national rate of 1.3%.

In the past two years, Scott has paid down $2 billion of Florida’s debt, nearly half of what former Gov. Charlie Crist ran up as governor. This is the first time in nearly 30 years that Florida has reduced its debt in back to back years and no one doubts that he will reduce it again this year. That lightens the burden on all hard-working Floridians, who now have the fourth lowest debt per person in the nation.

So the burden of government on average Floridians is reduced. More jobs are available and the expectation for far more jobs coming is offered by objective outsiders such as Moody’s.

These things don’t happen accidentally or all on their own. The are the result of strong, principled, conservative leadership.

It is no wonder that with 17 months before election day, Democrats have no serious opponents lined up yet to run against Scott. There will be no easy pickings here.

However, the Democrats will eventually coalesce around someone and it will become a huge fight. Because not only is the governor’s mansion up for grabs, but Florida is a bellwether state for the nation.

We cannot let anyone make the case that Florida is a blue state. It must remain red and then vote conservative for president in 2016. That starts with the 2014 governor’s race.

We must continue to make the case for conservatism and a conservative governor, for the good of our state and for the good of the country.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Country getting desperate for conservative change

By Joe Gruters

The news out of Washington — even at the subdued, unenthusiastic rate of the mainstream media — makes it more painfully clear every day that we have got to get more conservative Republicans in office.

The first goal is to win the U.S. Senate in 2014. Florida does not have a direct dog in that fight, but really everybody does. Here’s why.

Senate President Harry Reid is planning to eliminate some portions of the problematic Gang of Eight bill and insert a substitute amendment that includes the Corker-Hoeven amendment and the rest of the Gang of Eight’s bill. It becomes a 1,200-page bill no ones has read, just like Obamacare.

Then Reid is planning to refuse to allow any other amendments and move straight to final passage of the bill in the Senate. Debate is being cut off Wednesday in time for a final vote, just two days after debate started on the new bill — on 1,200 pages no one is sure of — and final passage is probably before the July 4 break.

Democrats are planning to try to ram another fiasco for the country through. Even if it is stopped in the House, the Democrats will simply use it as a campaign issue. A few Senate victories in 2012 and none of this would be happening.

On the executive branch, the mischief just gets more nefarious.

Fox News reported over the weekend that the Obama administration is suing Dollar General and a BMW facility in South Carolina for the alleged unfair use of criminal background checks for job applicants. The lawsuit comes just a few months after the feds warned companies about how such screenings can discriminate against African Americans.

Yup, under Obama, if you check an applicants’ criminal background you’re racist.

Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued new guidelines that cautioned against rejecting minority applicants who have committed a crime and recommended businesses eliminate policies that “exclude people from employment based on a criminal record.”

Wow. That is awful on so many levels. In addition to defying common sense (by people who clearly have never run a company) it is another freedom-squelching intrusion by the federal government into our everyday lives.

The Chicago Tribune, of all places, published an editorial Sunday explaining why the rollout of Obamacare will be a mess. “The rollout of Obamacare later this year is likely to bring a rate shock for many Americans who will buy health insurance from state marketplaces known as exchanges. How much will premiums jump? Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services won’t say. It could be that HHS is keeping a lid on rates because it wants to avoid a California-like debacle.”

The editorial went on to quote one unnamed top Democrat as saying the rollout will be a “train wreck.”

Republicans can’t give up on fighting Obamacare at every turn. Want more evidence?

The Conservative News Services reported that the Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46.4 million to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

According to CNS: “That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of ‘unauthorized’ alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a Treasury Inspector General audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to ‘unauthorized’ aliens were in Atlanta.”

Remember, and this is critical, the IRS is in charge of enforcing Obamacare. Not only has the organization proved itself corrupt and partisan, it is also apparently grossly incompetent — and in charge of one-seventh of the U.S. economy. What a disaster.

Republicans have to fight and fight and fight against Obamacare at every step. We can’t give up. And we can’t give up on border security and the rule of law. Everything remains at stake. So we need the U.S. Senate back first and get stronger in the House in 2014. That’s only next year, 17 months. Then we can think about 2016.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Floridians’ lives getting better under Gov. Scott’s leadership

By Joe Gruters

Detroit is defaulting on $2.5 billion in unsecured debt. Spending and taxing and regulating have made Detroit and the state of Michigan an economic basket case. The same types of big-government policies are putting a stranglehold on the economies of  California, Minnesota and many other states sucked into the quagmire. Californians were duped into passing yet another tax on themselves to keep paying for a huge bureaucracy without defaulting — forcing more job-creators to flee the state.

During Gov. Charlie Crist’s tenure as governor, the Florida’s debt increased $5.2 billion. No real surprise when we see that he is now a Democrat, albeit a wet-finger-in-the-wind Democrat.

But Florida’s story under Gov. Rick Scott is the complete opposite. In the past two years, Scott has paid down $2 billion of Florida’s debt, nearly half of what Crist ran up as governor. This is the first time in nearly 30 years that Florida has reduced its debt in back to back years. No one doubts that he will reduce debt again this year and continue to lighten the burden on hard-working Floridians.

Gov. Scott, with the support of Republicans in the Legislature, started these debt reductions even before the economy started pumping again, through good old-fashioned prudent cutbacks and the ability to say no to spend, spend, spend.

Florida’s debt per person of $7,079 is now the fourth lowest in the nation. As the economy recovers, and with Scott’s disciplined spending, expect the state’s debt to continue to decline.

“We have enough revenue. We’ve got to live within our means,” Scott said in an interview on the Fox News Channel recently. So refreshing. If only Washington could grasp this concept.

On Fox Business News, even Democrat-leaning Wayne Rogers, chairman of Wayne Rogers and Co., said “He’s doing a very good job in the sense that he’s reduced the deficit in Florida by $2 billion. That’s amazing in itself.”

The Tampa Bay Times’ and Miami Herald’s PolitiFact, no friend of conservatives, grudgingly concedes Scott has been an effective debt-reducer, even when it quibbles over exactly how much. “No one denies that total debt fell sharply with Scott, who is famously debt-averse,” they write.

Although Florida must balance its operating budget each year under the Florida Constitution, it can borrow money for capital improvement projects such as building roads, buying environmental lands, building university buildings and so on. That is where the long-term debt comes in. That is what Scott is cutting.

Scott’s aggressive action in luring companies from other states — such as government-burdened California and Minnesota — to Florida’s sunnier business climate rubs some people wrong in those states. But mostly just the politicians. It should be nothing but lauded by Floridians who are benefitting from the Governor’s hard work.

Florida has had 330,000 private sector jobs created in past 30 months. (No created or saved nonsense, but real, new jobs.)

Scott is focused on Florida and the top priority for Floridians — jobs and the economy. And that is good for all of us. Shoot, even Democrats’ quality of life is improving under Scott

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

Why We Can’t Give Up

By Joe Gruters

Yes. November was disheartening for Republicans, conservatives, traditionalists and all those who want to see a free and prosperous country for generations to come.

But disheartening can’t mean giving up.

We can’t continue in the current direction. Republicans know that.

We don’t need to.

In the fifth year of the Obama presidency, we have a barely sputtering economic recovery nationally, always on the brink of slipping back into a recession. We have a record number of people on food stamps and other welfare programs. Democrats will continue to say things would be worse without their interventions. But that embarrassingly weak defense can be defeated, and must be.

We’ve printed, borrowed and spent trillions more than we collected, all in the name of compassion and stimulating the economy. The economy stinks and we have record numbers of people not working, slogging along at the bottom of the economy with declining hope. The March employments numbers were dismal, well below even modest expectations. That is failure, but not just politics. It’s awful for the future of the country.

By the end of Obama’s second term, if Congress remains status quo, Democrats will have added $10 trillion to the national debt, on top of George W. Bush’s $4 trillion, which was bad enough. We don’t just need Republicans, we need actual, honest-go-gosh, principled conservative Republicans.

They must overturn the worst elements of Obamacare. Once it is fully implemented next year, it will be revealed for the bait-and-switch con we all suspected it was but were never sure because nobody actually knew what was in the bill. The opposite of what was promised will come to be in several areas: health-care premiums will go up, not down; health care will begin to be rationed, not expanded; doctors will be harder to find, not more plentiful; and jobs will be axed in the industry. We may never overturn Obamacare by name, but we can gut it, cutting out much of the government-takeover elements that will ruin our health care system.

Social Security and Medicare are headed for the shoals. The demographics against them are too strong without changes in the programs. Romney made the case, but he faced too many other problems. It’s a steep climb, but it must be done. People like Paul Ryan, who lives in a Democrat district in Wisconsin, has taken it on repeatedly. That’s what we need more of.

The reality is that these things can be done because we are right. But it will take a lot of work and devotion on our part. We’ve already had victories when the raw facts became overwhelming. For instance, most conservatives were skeptical of the man-made climate-warming hysteria and political control agenda behind it.

Carbon emissions have been continuing to increase since 2000, but the planet has not heated up since then. Some politicized scientists, many in the media and hysterical fringes like Al Gore may still keep yelling that the sky is falling. But they are already being marginalized by the plain facts. There is no real movement anymore to make the ridiculous changes that Kyoto and other insanities once proposed. Green energy won’t go away, but as long as it’s subsidies are kept under control or, dare we hope, eliminated, it’s a net positive. If the market will sustain it, great. Otherwise, chuck it.

The good news is that Republicans continue winning at the state level and conservative ideas are rising triumphant whenever tried. Florida is a perfect example, as our economy, which was worse when Gov. Scott took office, has roared past the national recovery — such as that is. If it were not for Republican-run states such as Florida, Texas, South Carolina, North Dakota and so, the nation would probably be in a recession.

Conservative economic policies work — when they are tried.

We must make sure they are tried again. Too much rests on it.

The direction has been to institutionalize massive government programs and intervention in the economy while steadily sapping the American people of the very qualities that made the country great: love of freedom, risk-taking, hard work, personal responsibility, faith.

We must change this direction. We fight for change, from top to bottom. Because Greece, Spain, Cyprus are our future if we don’t.

It starts next year, to maintain and expand our control of the House in Congress and try to pick up seats in the Senate — with conservative Republicans.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.