America could use more of that old, now-almost-forgotten Rick Scott. The Rick Scott we currently have isn’t much use to anybody — least of all to Rick Scott. He has a big brain, which is a welcome thing in a politician, but he isn’t packing the rest of the gear to be elected president. The person who convinces him that he isn’t the right guy for the top job will be doing him a favor. The voters have surprised me before. But, as public personas go, Scott is the demon lovechild of Senator Ted Cruz and Dr. Sheldon Cooper — one part nasty and one part aspy. In spite of his generally excellent performance in office as governor, his elections have been quite close: He beat Bill Nelson by only two-tenths of a percentage point in his 2018 Senate race, and before that he was reelected as governor in 2014 by only one point — against Charlie Crist, who for years has been doggedly persisting in Florida politics like a rare strain of chlamydia at the Villages. There is a reason for those close calls on Election Day.
Conservatives may not have much interest in whether Scott’s presidential ambitions crash and burn like some Saturday-morning cartoon catastrophe. But he is still at the top of the GOP Senate campaign, and a Republican majority in the Senate would be a very useful thing — it would mean the end of whatever remains of the Biden administration’s legislative agenda. Rick Scott complains that “Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people,” but a do-nothing Senate that also ensures that Joe Biden does nothing would be a do-nothing Senate worth having.
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