A crimson tide rolls through Florida

The “Florida Seven” freshmen rolled up four defeats of Democrat incumbents and held three open seats to produce the largest Republican freshmen class in the nation. Moreover, the Florida Seven are an incredibly diverse group that will broaden the face of the party in Washington. Allen West, a conservative, African-American, retired Army Colonel raised over $5 million dollars and took back a previously Republican seat from a well-funded Rahm Emanuel-recruited incumbent. West ran a “pedal to the metal” campaign and won by 8%. There is no sign that West will capitulate to business as usual in Washington. He has already announced that he intends to join the currently all-Democrat Congressional Black Caucus.

Sandy Adams, a female, former police officer and State Representative, overwhelmed Suzanne Kosmas so badly that the Democrat Congressional Committee walked away from the race with thirty days left in the campaign, leaving Kosmas to twist in the wind after she voted for ObamaCare and virtually every other Obama/Pelosi initiative. Dan Webster, the first Republican Speaker in the Florida House since Reconstruction and a Jeb Bush loyalist, crushed the Democrat that George will be described as “the worst politician” in the country, Alan Grayson, despite being outspent by millions of dollars. Grayson paid huge sums to Acorn-style “workers”, while Webster relied on an army of volunteers from local churches, home-schooled kids and conservative networks. Steve Southerland, a businessman and funeral home director who had never run for public office, courageously took out Allen Boyd, a leader of the Blue Dogs and a fourteen year incumbent and appropriator. Southerland is the first Republican to hold the FL-2 seat since the 1880s!

Doing their part by defending Republican open seats were Cuban-American David Rivera, former Sheriff Rich Nugent and Dennis Ross who beat an 18 year Democrat officeholder while also having 11% of his vote siphoned off by a Tea Party candidate. All three are principled conservatives and savvy political leaders whose talents in D.C. will become obvious.

Florida’s incumbent Republican Congressmen defended their seats and raised millions of dollars to support candidates throughout the country. All of this caused the Democrats to spend tens of millions of dollars in Florida’s expensive media markets; thus depleting Democrat’s resources to protect liberals in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois.

The Democrats are left with only six seats out of a twenty-five member House delegation and four of those six seats represent only portions of three of Florida’s sixty-seven counties. For the most part, the Democrats represent a narrow geographic area in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties. The others are Corrine Brown in a minority gerrymandered district that stretches from Jacksonville to Orlando and Kathy Castor in a tightly-packed portion of Tampa. Moreover, Florida will gain two new Congressional seats after the census, which will be drawn by the now veto-proof, huge Republican conservative majorities in the Florida State House and Senate. A good bet that the Florida GOP delegation will grow from nineteen to twenty-one in 2012.

Finally, there is Senator Marco Rubio. The energy, enthusiasm, fundraising and sheer star power that he delivered to the GOP also contributed to the huge Republican House victory. The Rubio “prairie-fire” in Florida will assist House Florida conservatives in reforming Washington.

In the days and weeks to come, the new Republican leadership in Washington will be awarding Chairmanships and assigning important committee posts. Let’s hope they recognize the importance of the Florida delegation; especially the Florida Seven.

Tom Feeney served as the former Speaker of the Florida House and spent 3 terms in the U.S. Congress.