Florida Tea Party Coalition Distances Itself from Monday Obamacare Committee Brouhaha

A coalition of regional Tea Party organizations from across the Sunshine State has penned a letter to Sen. Joe Negron, R-Palm City, who chairs the Florida Senate'sSelect Committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare):

"On behalf of the dozens of tea party groups we represent, The Florida Alliance wishes to express our appreciation for your efforts to evaluate the proper response for the government of the state of Florida as the federal government seeks to implement Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PPACA). We recognize that there will be a great deal of information for you and your committee to digest as you evaluate policy and law while deciding how best to proceed. You will need to best determine the best way to defend the natural rights of Floridians protected by the Florida and U.S. Constitutions. We would like your committee and all elected officials to consider the very important and extremely negative aspects of PPACA as we briefly describe here. We also wish you to recognize that there are alternative pathways for achieving markedly increased access to lower cost and higher quality health care and health insurance for Florida that are outside those envisioned in PPACA. Finally, we wish to apologize for the behavior of some of our compatriots who were over-enthusiastic andinappropriate at the Select Senate Committee on PPACA meeting this week. ...

"Tea Party leaders in Florida as represented by The Florida Alliance have long rejected organized and planned tactics by groups like Code Pink, MoveOn.organd Occupy Wall Street to shout people down in meetings. Our compatriots were responding from an over-abundance of passion for freedom. They were spontaneously trying to participate in a process that has been frustrating and opaque for years and their response was not premeditated and not intended to interfere in your process. However, speaking over a sitting senator who is using his allotted time to represent his constituents is unacceptable. We cannot allow basic rules of civil conduct to be violated and we will endeavor to ask our fellow patriots to respect the process in ways we ask to be respected as well. We stand ready to assist you in your efforts to protect the natural rights of Floridians protected by the Florida and U.S. Constitution to life, liberty and property."

The entire letter is attached to this blog post. For background, check out Sunshine State News' coverage of Monday's committee meeting.