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What did our mothers tell us about overindulgence? “Oh no, don’t worry about it. We swear we’re just going to have one more cup of this tea,” we all said back in 2010 while we were busy here in Florida electing anyone remotely connected to the Tea Party. Next thing we knew, we blacked out and found ourselves waking up the next morning with a scary bald guy named Rick we didn’t know all that well and dealing with the vomit-caked consequences of our Tea Party binge.
Or, at least that’s how liberal mag Mother Jone’s paints it in their latest issue.
Accompanied by a video, MoJo makes the case that Rick Scott and our conservative legislature turned our state in a failed nightmare of a Tea Party experiment:
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The article is one of the most eviscerating take-downs of Scott’s legacy we’ve seen yet (and believe us, its not like anyone, even the conservative press, is writing articles praising Scott’s legacy):
In just one year, Scott and his conservative allies slashed state spending by $4 billion even as they cut corporate taxes. They’ve rejected billions in federal funds in one of the states hardest hit by the recession. They’ve axed everything from health care and public transportation initiatives to mosquito control and water supply programs. “Florida is where the rhetoric becomes the reality. It’s kind of the tea party on steroids,” says state Rep. Mark Pafford, a Democrat. “We’ve lost all navigation in terms of finding that middle ground.”
As a result of Scott’s Tea Party agenda (and, not to mention, his many basic failures as a politician that have nothing to do with his ideology), his approval ratings are so far down in the toilet they’d need a super plunger to be saved. Chillingly though, MoJo writes, “it may be too late for buyer’s remorse.” Stephanie Mencimer enumerates the many problem’s caused by Scott’s agenda that may have irreversible effects, including the state’s new policy of warehousing special needs children in nursing homes.
“I don’t think it’s insurmountable to recover from dismantling 50 years’ worth of great government structures that made society in Florida better,” says Democratic state Rep. Mark Pafford tells the mag. “But it could be a decade before we really begin to address some of these issues.”
[MoJo: What’s It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida!]
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