Good bills -- unfortunately, not all the bad ones -- died in the 2015 sine die chaos. There is one survivor that somehow lives to raise its own kind of hell.

A near miss can be a sharp spur, so Rick Santorum wants to say something to those who profess condescending puzzlement about his persistence in pursuing the Republican presidential nomination: You probably have no idea how close I came to defeating Mitt Romney in 2012.

Four months have passed since Blaise Ingoglia took over as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida in an upset over party favorite Leslie Dougher, but wounds between the Senate and the rest of the party are slow to heal.

Quarterly meetings usually bring in Republican lawmakers from both the House and the Senate. Senate President Andy Gardiner has made appearances at recent meetings, flanked by other top Republicans in the upper chamber.

Not this weekend. Senators were noticeably absent from the party's spring quarterly meeting.