Let me get this? Donald Trump picked the guy who called him "Little Hitler"- did Trump think this was a compliment?

Poor little Marco Rubio took insults, ate crow. Opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel by Scott Maxwell.....

But, Trump chose Vance instead

Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate made sense. Vance is a best-selling hillbilly book author, an enlisted Marine who achieved the rank of corporal after serving four years, is a Yale-educated attorney and right wing GOP star.

Still, Trump’s selection was also a dagger through the heart of the political aspirations for one Florida Man — U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

Few politicians have so thoroughly capitulated and subjugated themselves to Trump in the hopes of advancing their own political careers than poor little Marco.

Eight years ago, Rubio called Trump “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” Rubio said Trump was a “con artist” who was too “dangerous” and “erratic” to be entrusted with nuclear codes. Marco mocked Trump for his terrible spelling, his orange makeup, his failed businesses, said he may have pee'd in his pants during a debate, said he was too old, hired migrants, and is a con artist. https://t.co/hPLmoXPFTS pic.twitter.com/Iie3z6cpVU

But then Trump won the nomination. And Rubio changed his tone. That might not have been a surprise for former opponents. But then, when it became clear Trump would run again this year — and need a running mate — Rubio completed his metamorphosis from vocal critic to full-throated adulator.

Trump had famously branded Rubio as “Little Marco,” calling him a “lightweight” and “basket case” who was “all talk and no action.” Yet with Rubio desperate for new political life, he ate every plate of crow Trump served him and then asked for more.

“We elect this man as president, we will make America greater than it has ever been,” Rubio told a crowd last week when he still thought he had a chance to be Trump’s No. 2.

Other Republicans, like Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain, didn’t care if Trump held political sway. They stuck to their guns — and their beliefs. But Rubio was willing to say anything to move ahead. Suddenly the guy who used to describe Trump as a dangerous and tawdry charlatan was telling anyone who’d listen that Trump was the only person fit to lead this country.

Yet it was all for naught. Trump chose the much less qualified right wing hillbilly JD Vance.

Now, Vance also said critical things about Trump during his first campaign, once wondering if Trump was either “a cynical a**hole” or “America’s Hitler.” (IMO- Trump took this Nazi slur to be a compliment!) But Trump and his advisers saw things in Vance they didn’t see in Rubio.

First, he’s from a swing state and region and well-liked within his party. Perhaps more significant, though, Team Trumpzi seemed to believe that Vance’s evolution from Trump-basher to Trump-supporter was authentic. 

Unlike Rubio, who seemed to be nakedly pandering.😕😒
(Maine Writer- IMO Trump's campaign did not want a qualified politician to be the President in Waiting- too threatening.....too much like former VP Mike Pence.)

That’s the lesson that Rubio never seems to learn — that a man who tries to be everything to everyone ends up respected by no one.

The most illustrative proof came early in Rubio’s Senate career when he was part of a bipartisan group of senators who decided to draft a bill to address one of America’s most complicated problems — immigration reform.

The group dubbed themselves “The Gang of Eight” and ultimately produced a reform plan that was thoughtful, comprehensive and full of compromise. As such, it drew criticism from hard-liners on both the left and the right.

And when things got tough, Rubio bailed. He not only backed away from his reform proposal, he said he wouldn’t vote for it.

If Rubio thought he was solving a problem, he was wrong. His turncoat behavior only intensified the criticism. When fellow “Gang” member McCain was asked about Rubio, he responded: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And the leader of an immigration reform group on the left said Rubio “will always be known as the guy who stood up for something he seemed to believe in and backed down when it was politically convenient to do so.”

That’s just not a guy you want in the trenches with you. At least that’s what Donald Trump concluded.

Vance also had something in common with Trump in that the two men have never been part of the GOP insiders’ club. Vance doesn’t have core beliefs that neatly follow the party lines, since he has supported labor unions and higher minimum wages. Whereas some wonder whether Rubio has any core beliefs at all❓

There were also questions about the constitutionality of having two people from the same state on the same presidential ticket. But most experts downplayed those concerns, especially since one of the men could simply move.

The bigger issue seems to be a belief that Vance simply does more to help Trump — a point even Rubio seemed resigned to acknowledge Monday when he celebrated his own rejection, 😜 calling the 39-year-old Vance “a fantastic choice … an incredibly intelligent and talented man who is completely committed to making America great again.” (IOW, Vance is a blindly loyal right wing Trumpzi.)

There’s still a chance Rubio could snag a role in Trump’s Cabinet if Trump wins in November. And he’s probably secure in his Florida Senate seat for as long as he wants. Republicans may like Trump a lot more than Rubio. But they’ll take Rubio over any Democrat.

Maybe Rubio will learn from his most recent rejection that it rarely pays to change stripes so often; that the men and women most fondly remembered in politics are the ones who stick to their guns, even when it’s inconvenient.

More likely, though, is that Rubio just keeps being the same guy who Senator John McCain described as a human weathervane, from his immigration-flipping in 2013, to his Trump-flopping in 2024. Only maybe this time it gets him a consolation prize appointment.

Florida Republicans special election ran a "no woke" agenda but their campaign flopped- Vote Blue!

Democrat Tom Keen is the new State Representative-Elect for Florida House District 35, which represents parts of Orange County and Osceola County.

Echo opinion by Scott Maxwell published in the Orlando Sentinel:

Something weird is happening in Florida. Democrats are winning. For the first time in years.😀😇

When Navy veteran Tom Keen surprised the political establishment Tuesday, flipping a legislative district from red to blue, it was huge.

How huge? Well, the last time voters cast ballots in this district, Republicans won by 11 points. On Tuesday, they lost by 3. That’s a big swing — especially in a race where Republicans massively outspent their opponents.

More significantly, from a big-picture standpoint, this Democratic flip in Central Florida comes on the heels of other big, surprising Democratic swings.

In Jacksonville — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ home turf, where a former head of the Republican Party of Florida had been mayor for years — voters also switched allegiances last year, putting a Democrat in the mayor’s office instead.

And in South Florida, Democrats barely lost a special election last month in a legislative district where Republicans had dominated by 30 points just a year before.

As one who has covered politics in this state for more than a quarter of a century, I can tell you this is not normal. 

For years, Florida Democrats have racked up one loss after another. Sometimes by wee margins. Often by landslides. But almost always consistent losses.

Yet now — after a few years of a GOP supermajority in Tallahassee fuming about Disney, drag queens and rainbow flags while insurance rates skyrocketed and SAT scores dropped — voters seem ready for a course correction.

It’s way too early for Democrats to start predicting a blue wave in November. They’ve done so many times before, only to be proven wrong, often in painfully embarrassing fashion.

But these recent results show a markedly different trend, possibly for two main reasons:

One is that, for the first time in recent memory, Democrats seem to have their act together. Instead of spending all their time carping on social media, they actively worked on get-out-the-vote initiatives.

The other is that middle-of-the-road voters — NPAs and moderate conservatives — seem to have finally had enough of the culture wars. They’ve seen too many books pulled from school libraries, too many laws passed trying to tell parents how to raise their kids and too many votes for clearly unconstitutional laws that were later overturned by the courts.

Screaming about Pride flags isn’t all that amusing to people who have seen their home-insurance jump 102% over just three years.

Yet Keen’s GOP opponent, Erika Booth, leaned heavily into the culture-war agenda. Literally, the No. 1 priority listed on her website was to “Fight Joe Biden’s woke agenda.” 

Booth did not talk about improving education or courting better-paying jobs. But fighting “Sleepy Joe” and “trans-education.” The homophobic boogeyman tactic seems pretty played out.

Interestingly, even Republicans seem to know their own culture-war crusades are backfiring. In one of the oddest, underhanded tactics in this race, Republicans set up a bogus campaign committee where they pretended to be Democrats and bashed Keen for supporting Gov. DeSantis’ signature “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. (Yes, that’s the phrase the Republicans used to refer to their own bill❗😳😧)

Another tactic that backfired was the scheme that led to this special election in the first place, giving Democrats the opportunity to steal the seat in Orange and Osceola counties. 

It never needed to happen. It only did because DeSantis decided to give the district’s former Republican rep a position running a state college. The gift was part of a trend of DeSantis handing out cushy higher-ed jobs to political buddies who have about as much higher-ed experience as my cat, Leona.

It was obvious cronyism. But Republicans figured: Who cares? We always win the seats anyway.

Only this time, they didn’t. This time, they faced an electorate that seemed fed up with the histrionics. So, while Booth ducked debates and put out missives about transgender issues, Keen focused on property insurance, affordable housing and reproductive rights.

Keen wasn’t originally backed by the establishment Democrats in the primary. But he campaigned alongside their progressive stars in the general, including Maxwell Alejandro Frost and Anna Eskamani, while continuing to stress his interest in the serious issues that mattered to all Floridians.

And it apparently resonated, not just with Democrats, but with moderate Republicans and NPAs. We know this because, while only 7,300 Democrats cast ballots in Orange County Tuesday, Keen fetched more than 9,400 votes.

Democrat Tom Keen won because people who weren’t Democrats wanted him in office. And that’s why Republican operatives all over Florida were quaking Tuesday night. They threw everything they had at this race and only managed to turn voters off.

Again, I still think it’s way too early to predict a blue wave in Florida in 2024. It’s hard to overstate the money-advantage Republicans will have. Democrats haven’t unseated a Republican from statewide office in more than three decades. If Trump is on the ballot in November, he’ll energize the Republican base in a way few other candidates can. And it’s worth re-emphasizing that Democrats still aren’t turning out at the polls the way Republicans do. A slightly higher percentage of Republicans still cast ballots Tuesday.

But for now, we’re seeing a trend that says moderate voters have had enough of the culture chaos and are looking to balance the scales a bit — which is something Florida hasn’t seen in a long, long time.

#VoteBlue

Antisemitism extends into dangerous extremist views about all minority groups

The eruption of neo-Nazism and White Supremacy across the country has exposed the public to symbols, terms, and ideology drawn directly from Nazi Germany and Holocaust-era fascist movements. (More information at this site here.)

Neo-Nazis surge in Florida. Don’t you dare act surprised | Commentary.

The leaders of today’s Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist organizations are not Adolf Hitler, and America is not Germany, but, in order to understand their agenda, it is vital to understand the history of these code words, symbols, and ideologies.

Echo opinion by Scott Maxwell published in the Orlando Sentinel Florida has been full of Nazi news lately.

Neo-Nazi groups have staged demonstrations near Disney and in Altamonte Springs. They’ve blanketed neighborhoods with flyers, urging others to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

One neo-Nazi was arrested for criminal mischief Sunday. Another was arrested a few days earlier.

A man used a rifle with a swastika on it to slaughter three people in Jacksonville.

Rolling Stone assessed the stories, root causes and reactions, concluding: “Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate”

CAM is a global coalition engaging more than 700 partner organizations and three million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. We act collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.

This may make you mad. Or sad. It should. But don’t you dare act surprised.

Because this is an ugly, natural extension of the divisive culture wars that have been celebrated in Florida in recent years. You can’t demonize gay people and Black people and then go: Gee, I wonder why some folks are also demonizing Jewish people?

Besides, neo-Nazi groups don’t just preach hate against Judaism. They also demonize people of color and different sexual orientation.

As Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum, said in a recent Sentinel story: “You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ ”

Hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If love is love is love, then hate breeds hate breeds hate.

So when you see a politician who responds to a group that targets black people, gay people and Jewish people by saying only: “But I love the Jewish people,” they’re showing themselves.

I don’t lay this rise in extremism and extremist-related incidents — an 80% increase in Florida over the last two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League — at the feet of any single politician. 

Nor do I believe all members of any one party are to blame. I’ve found that neither bigotry nor compassion is limited to any one political party.

But there’s a growing segment of politicians on the right who’ve decided the easiest way to build a rabid following is by vilifying already marginalized communities. So they peddle a nonstop narrative of you-vs.-them:

THEY are coming for your job. Or your kid’s spot on the swim team. Or your freedom of religion.

THEY want to make you feel guilty about your past. And to recruit your children.

You are a victim, a target. Let us protect you … from them.

It’s all music to the ears of neo-Nazi recruiters.

Reasonable people can certainly have different opinions on sensitive topics, whether it’s affirmative action or transgender competitors in sports.

But too often, we don’t see reasonable. Instead, we see transgender people labeled as freaks, Black protestors labeled as animals and gay citizens and their allies being called “groomers.” Not by rogue, swastika-toting Nazis, but by top state officials, state legislators or even from inside the governor’s office.

Volusia County Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby referred to LGBTQ citizens who had testified against a proposed bill in Tallahassee as “demons” and “mutants.”

If you don’t understand why that’s not OK, listen to Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who said comments like that “put a target” on the backs of transgender citizens, adding: “It’s not OK to dehumanize people who aren’t hurting anyone.”

You think comments like Barnaby’s don’t embolden neo-Nazis?

Or from Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is quick to decry antisemitism even as he disparages other marginalized groups.

Fine has targeted LGBTQ citizens with both legislation and rhetoric, accusing them of “grooming” children and mocking their requests for dignity. “I was just asked my pronouns,” Fine said on Facebook last year. “For future reference, they are: You / Are / A / Fu&$ng / Moron.”

This from a guy who claims he’s been approached about leading a state university.

A lot of people don’t understand why it’s OK to vilify one minority group but not others. I don’t. Neither do many kids.

So while there’s a surge in neo-Nazi incidents among in Florida, there shouldn’t be any surprise that we’re also seeing it among our youth — with swastikas showing up on bathroom and school walls at high schools in Orange and Volusia counties. Even at a K-8 school in Seminole.

The kids are watching the adults. And they’re learning — not only how to hate, but how to feel emboldened about doing so out loud.

So if you’re appalled by Hitler salutes and White supremacist talk, good. You should be.

But don’t you dare act surprised. Especially if you keep supporting the people who are serving up this divisive, toxic stew.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Nazi propaganda is hate speech

Florida has been full of Nazi news lately. Echo opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper by Scott Maxwell:

Residents of a Florida town received dozens of antisemitic flyers  prompting police warnings for them to discard the hate speech.

Neo-Nazi groups have staged demonstrations near Disney and in Altamonte Springs. They’ve blanketed neighborhoods with flyers, urging others to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

One neo-Nazi was arrested for criminal mischief Sunday. Another was arrested a few days earlier.

A man used a rifle with a swastika on it to slaughter three people in Jacksonville.

Rolling Stone assessed the stories, root causes and reactions, concluding: “Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate”

This may make you mad. Or sad. It should. But don’t you dare act surprised. 😞😢

Because this is an ugly, natural extension of the divisive culture wars that have been (wrongly😡) celebrated in Florida in recent years. You can’t demonize gay people and Black people and then go: Gee, I wonder why some folks are also demonizing Jewish people?

Besides, neo-Nazi groups don’t just preach hate against Judaism. They also demonize people of color and different sexual orientation.

As Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum, said in a recent Sentinel story: “You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ ”

Hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If love is love is love, then hate breeds hate breeds hate.

So when you see a politician who responds to a group that targets black people, gay people and Jewish people by saying only: “But I love the Jewish people,” they’re showing themselves.

Stop hate speech!

I don’t lay this rise in extremism and extremist-related incidents — an 80% increase in Florida over the last two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League — at the feet of any single politician. Nor do I believe all members of any one party are to blame. I’ve found that neither bigotry nor compassion is limited to any one political party.

But there’s a growing segment of politicians on the right who’ve decided the easiest way to build a rabid following is by vilifying already marginalized communities. So they peddle a nonstop narrative of you-vs.-them:

THEY are coming for your job. Or your kid’s spot on the swim team. Or your freedom of religion.

THEY want to make you feel guilty about your past. And to recruit your children.

You are a victim, a target. Let us protect you … from them.

It’s all music to the ears of neo-Nazi recruiters.

Reasonable people can certainly have different opinions on sensitive topics, whether it’s affirmative action or transgender competitors in sports.

But too often, we don’t see reasonable. Instead, we see transgender people labeled as freaks, Black protestors labeled as animals and gay citizens and their allies being called “groomers.” (Former Guy tRumpzi calls the media "vermin") 

Not by rogue, swastika-toting Nazis, but by top state officials, state legislators or even from inside the governor’s office.

Volusia County Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby referred to LGBTQ citizens who had testified against a proposed bill in Tallahassee as “demons” and “mutants.”

If you don’t understand why that’s not OK, listen to Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who said comments like that “put a target” on the backs of transgender citizens, adding: “It’s not OK to dehumanize people who aren’t hurting anyone.”

You think comments like Barnaby’s don’t embolden neo-Nazis?

Or from Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is quick to decry antisemitism even as he disparages other marginalized groups.

Fine has targeted LGBTQ citizens with both legislation and rhetoric, accusing them of “grooming” children and mocking their requests for dignity. “I was just asked my pronouns,” Fine said on Facebook last year. “For future reference, they are: You / Are / A / Fu&$ng / Moron.”

This from a guy who claims he’s been approached about leading a state university.

A lot of people don’t understand why it’s OK to vilify one minority group but not others. I don’t. Neither do many kids.

So, while there’s a surge in (evil 👿💀) neo-Nazi incidents going on in Florida, there shouldn’t be any surprise that we’re also seeing it among our youth — with swastikas showing up on bathroom and school walls at high schools in Orange and Volusia counties. Even at a K-8 school in Seminole.

The kids are watching the adults. And they’re learning — not only how to hate, but how to feel emboldened about doing so out loud.

So if you’re appalled by Hitler salutes and White supremacist talk, good. You should be horrified❗

But don’t you dare act surprised. Especially if you keep supporting the people serving up this divisive, toxic stew.