It was not only liberals who were celebrating on Nov. 7. Many conservatives were elated as well not at the results, but at the fact that it was over.
American elections are nasty and enervating and those are among the reasons only half the potential electorate votes.
But, for Florida residents at least, the celebration was premature.
Liberals, to whom government is a deity and politics is a religion, merely morphed from one election to another, in the process hilariously claiming that the re-election of Barack Obama was a referendum on Rick Scott.
From Nov. 6 until November 2014, the effort to unseat Florida Gov. Rick Scott will be under way.
There will not be one day during that time without an editorial, column or editorial disguised as a news story that trashes Scott in one way or another or praises one of his potential challengers.
Liberals longed for Jeb Bush to go also. But not in the way they do Scott. He is loathed by the left.
Largely, it is because he is not a politician. Thus, he desecrates their religion by his presence.
He also was a successful businessman. Strike two. Success deserves punishment, not reward, in the liberal view.
From what I can gather, Scott's major offense during his first term was to suggest that state employees actually pay for part of their own retirement.
In the era of European socialism we are entering, this gives sensitive liberals the vapors.
Government's function, as they see it, is to coddle us from cradle to grave. Even now they are straining to get closer to the cradle by making the voluntary pre-kindergarten program mandatory.
Scott also has supported sensible reforms for the government schools, such as merit pay for teachers.
Currently, he is proposing that higher ed find ways to keep tuitions low. This makes him a radical when it comes to education.
To the left, he also harbors other subversive views, such as keeping taxes at a reasonable level so as to attract business and economic growth that would produce jobs.
How Florida liberals must envy the California politicians who just persuaded voters to trade a cow for a sack of beans by embracing even higher taxes. That already bankrupt state now will sing and dance like Crosby and Hope along The Road to Insolvency at a more rapid pace.
Who will topple Scott while waving the banner of liberalism? Liberals are tossing around the names of retreads like Alex Sink and even are speaking of Chameleon Charlie Crist, who is a Democrat this week. I think.
It won't be hard to sell any liberal in Miami and the college towns, but the rest of Florida might still have other ideas that more closely match those propounded by the Founding Fathers. (Public school grads, see Wikipedia.)
So, for those surfeited on politicking, I would suggest turning off the telly and listening instead to old-time radio shows such as Fibber McGee and Molly on the Web. Even the worst of McGee's whoppers couldn't approach some of what you are likely to hear during the next 12 months.
At least his were funny.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
