December 24, 2009

Bill Cotterell: Cracks appear in GOP unity

Bill Cotterell Capital Curmudgeon

There's an old bit of sage philosophical wisdom — Chinese, I think — that goes something like,"Choose your enemies carefully because that's who you will become."The Florida Republican Party has finally become accustomed to being the dominant force in stategovernment. Perhaps predictably, it is now becoming more like the Democrats — not in positions onissues, but in style.Republicans are not as good at hair-splitting as the Democrats, who can argue furiously for an hour,then pass a motion 112-3. Although Democrats remain the largest party by registration, they fell frompower partly because of their inability to reunite after sharply dividing over things the average workingFloridian doesn't care about.Nearing 20 years of increasing power, Republicans are starting to demand ideological purity on theright as avidly as the Democrats used to excommunicate apostates on the left.It used to be that the only way the Republicans could win statewide was for the Democrats to start therace by slashing their own Achilles tendons. And Democrats were happy to do so.Claude Kirk was our first GOP governor since Reconstruction because Mayor Robert King High of Miami beat Gov. Haydon Burns in a bitter 1966 Democratic primary. The Democrats couldn't get backtogether in November.So they learned their lesson, right? Are you kidding? They're Democrats.In 1968, former Gov. LeRoy Collins and Attorney General Earl Faircloth split the party, and aRepublican congressman, Ed Gurney, went to the U.S. Senate. Democrat Dick Stone regained theseat in the post-Watergate washout of 1974, but he was defeated in 1980 by Insurance Commissioner Bill Gunter — who went on to lose the general election to the late Sen. Paula Hawkins.She, incidentally, had won her first statewide race in a 1972 Public Service Commission contest,preceded by — you guessed it — a fratricidal Democratic primary.Attorney General Jim Smith and state Rep. Steve Pajcic of Jacksonville did it again in 1986, giving usRepublican Gov. Bob Martinez. Two years later, Gunter and then-U.S. Rep. Buddy MacKay continuedthe tradition, and Republican Connie Mack won the U.S. Senate race.Except for 1970, when Kirk had to beat two Republicans for renomination, the GOP has been fairlymonolithic. Even when Jeb Bush had three challengers in 1994, the nomination was never in doubt.Mack had a token challenge from his right in 1988, and Martinez won renomination over a similarlyweak opponent in 1990, but the Republicans have had generally tidy little primaries, when necessary.Until now. Now, the roles have reversed.The Democrats have only one real primary, with state Sens. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach and DaveAronberg of Greenacres vying for attorney general. Their contest has been polite, so far, and so have