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FL senator taking on Republicans who are nothing more than ‘a speed bump on the road to socialism’

March 5, 2022 | | Print Article

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Florida Sen. Rick Scott isn’t backing down from his fight with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell over McConnell’s refusal to support his plan to fix America.

In a nearly 750-word op-ed published on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, the senator slammed those Republicans who “have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to socialism,” saying bluntly that they don’t “deserve to govern.”

While Scott stopped short of naming names, everybody automatically assumed he was talking about McConnell.

As previously reported, Scott’s 11-point plan calls for teaching American exceptionalism, promoting color-blind equality, refunding the police, securing the border, dialing down entitlements, forcing those low-income Americans who currently pay no taxes to pay their fair share, requiring programs like Social Security and Medicare to be reauthorized every five years, etc.

The parts about reauthorizing Social Security/Medicare and raising taxes on low-income earners who pay nothing — and who, if anything, collect oodles in government entitlements — irked McConnell.

“We would not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda,” he said earlier this week:

But Scott argued in his op-ed that unless the Republican Party takes a stand now, they’re going to lose this country.

“The militant left has seized control of the federal government, the news media, big tech, academia, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, most corporate boardrooms and even some of our top military leaders,” he wrote.

“The elites atop our nation’s institutions are working hard to redefine America and silence their opponents. They want to end the American experiment and replace it with a woke socialist utopia, and we are sitting around watching it happen,” Scott noted.

He presumably meant a “woke socialist utopia” where non-white farmers are denied loans because of the color of their skin and black females are automatically granted universal basic income payments because of the color of theirs.

The problem, Scott continued, is that Republicans are unable to push real solutions because of “leaders” like McConnell who, out of fear, demand they remain silent.

“[M]any live in fear of speaking the truth in Washington. If you do, the Democrats will attack you and use it against you. Therefore, they tell us, it’s best to keep your head down, vote as directed, and be quiet,” according to the senator.

“I’ve been told there are unwritten rules in Washington about what you can and cannot say. You can’t tell the public that Social Security and Medicare are going bankrupt. You can’t talk about term limits, because, while voters want them, nobody in Washington does. You can’t talk about balancing the budget or shrinking the debt,” he continued.

Meanwhile, he complained, Democrats are busy giving away as much money as possible, and coaching it behind a theory known as “modern monetary theory.”

God forbid, the senator continued, that he points all this out to the public.

“So, I went out and made a statement that got me in trouble. I said that all Americans need to have some skin in the game. Even if it is just a few bucks, everyone needs to know what it is like to pay some taxes,” he wrote.

“It hit a nerve. Part of the deception is achieved by disconnecting so many Americans from taxation. It’s a genius political move. And it is bankrupting us.”

The idea appears to be that if everybody had to pay something, the public as a whole would be better aware of the realities of America’s fiscal house.

The idea seems to be based on the belief that, though most people grow up as fiscal liberals, they turn into fiscal conservatives once they grow up, start paying taxes and acquire their own property — and then pay even more taxes.

Scott stressed that he’s not trying to raise taxes on the working and middle-class families that already pay into the system. They already understand what’s at stake, he wrote, which is why he has a record of cutting their taxes “more than 100 times as governor of Florida.”

What he wants, he continued, “is to require those who are able-bodied but won’t work to pay a small amount so we’re all in this together.”

“That means both free-loaders who abuse the welfare system and billionaires who pay lawyers and lobbyists to help them get around the tax laws. This may be a scary statement in Washington, but in the real world it’s common sense,” he explained.

To be fair, polls say this specific part of the proposal polls most poorly:

But on the other hand, asking children to do their homework and chores tends to poll poorly as well.

Scott concluded his piece by calling for his critics to “bring it on.”

“There will be many more attacks on me and this plan from careerists in Washington, who personally profit while ruining this country. Bring it on. The American people are fed up, and they will show that at the ballot box this November,”  he wrote.

Vivek Saxena
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