Let's Not Even Go There

Well, I don't have to tell you how disappointed I am in the voters of Florida.

It's not they elected mostly Republicans -- heck, I voted for a Republican (one, actually almost two) because I honestly felt he was the best man for the job. That's generally how I select my candidates -- by looking carefully at their record and deciding without paying attention to party which one is best suited for the job and is likely to actually address the problems this state faces.

Apparently I'm about the only one who actually does this.

What disappoints me is that the voters here reward the candidate that gets the ugliest and stoops the lowest in their TV ads.

Both parties did this to excess this year, but the Republicans managed to be consistently nastier, consistently more vicious, consistently more willing to distort the other guy's record.

So they won. They won big, frankly.

What does that say about us?

How would you convince someone to vote with ads like this, and candidates like these?

Hasn't anybody noticed how badly life in Florida has deteriorated since we went so heavily Republican? Since we allowed this vicious cycle of mud-slinging to go completely out of control? How far our schools have fallen in the past decade? How badly we've handled the sensitive environment of this state? How little money most of us make? How much health care and the cost of living have risen? How bad the roads are, how much worse the air and water are? How close the oil companies are to drilling here? How much more billboard blight and ethics problems we have?

How much of a national and international laughingstock we've become?