It’s a long way to November, longer than usual quite possibly, but political history tells us that virtual ties go to Rick Scott.
Ihave read the same national story five times in eight days: Rick Scott is in deep trouble. Most of those stories were triggered by an early June poll from Florida Atlantic University showing Scott’s opponent, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, closing an earlier 17-point gap to a current 45–43 “virtual tie” with Scott, making the race “tighter than expected.”
My question would be, “Expected by whom?” Rick Scott has run previously for statewide office three times, twice for governor, and once for the U.S. Senate. In each case, he has won by a whisker.
I once got a laugh out of Scott, the wealthiest member of the Senate, by calling him “too cheap to pay for a landslide.” That quote may never stand shoulder to shoulder beside “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” but we all make do with the gifts that God gave us. Getting a laugh out of Rick Scott is no mean feat.
Ms. Mucarsel-Powell is an attractive, Hispanic, former Democratic congresswoman from south Florida. The Democrats have spent heavily this spring to narrow the gap with Scott. It’s a long way to November, longer than usual quite possibly, but political history tells us that virtual ties go to Rick Scott.
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The inimitable Lee Edwards wrote recently to express his surprise that the two of us, senior citizens by any measure, were still writing “important essays.” That note was classic Lee Edwards. First, it was generous. While I have lived a bit of conservative history, Lee has researched, compiled, and written it — all of it. Between Lee Edwards and George Nash, the record of post-war conservatism has been comprehensively inscribed. Second, it was, also characteristically, an expression of gratitude. Lee, over the course of his long and accomplished life, has never taken anything for granted.
I met him back in the Sixties. I was on a mission from Editor Buckley to set in motion some plot du jour — whatever it might have been — and I needed a PR man in Washington. My mission did not require an exhaustive search. It turned out that there was one conservative PR man in Washington and, after a reflective review lasting five minutes or so, I settled on Lee Edwards. He was good, very good. (He was as good, in fact, as the conservative PR legend in New York, Marvin Liebman. The centerpiece of Marvin’s office suite was a stockroom stuffed to the ceiling with stationery from every conservative group in the country — some of them genuinely grassroots, most of them creatively astroturfed. If in a thoughtless moment you had contributed 50 bucks to Barry Goldwater back in the day, Marvin would have become your most dependable correspondent over the following several decades.)
In his early-middle years, Lee decided that the PR business was not enough for him, or for his country, and he engineered a remarkable reinvention of what had been to that point a lucrative career. He enrolled as a graduate student at Catholic University, earned a Ph.D. and, a few years later, emerged from the academic cocoon as Historian Lee Edwards.
Well and elegantly done, old friend.
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In NR’s tireless effort to unite the Democratic Party, we suggest that, at its convention this summer, the DNC should scrap the scheduled keynote address and substitute a taped replay of the speech to their 1992 convention delivered by Barbara Jordan. The key passages in her speech included these:
We are one, we Americans. We are one, and we reject any intruder who seeks to divide us on the basis of race and color.
We honor cultural identity. We always have, we always will, but separatism is not allowed. . . . Separatism is not the American way.
We must not allow ideas like political correctness to divide us and cause us to reverse hard-won achievements in human rights and civil rights.
We reject both White racism and Black racism. . . .
E pluribus unum, from many, one. It was a good idea when the country was founded and it’s a good idea today.
Ms. Jordan, an eloquent black Democrat from Houston, electrified the crowd, and the nation, that night.