This is my first diary here after spending a few months straddling the line between "contrarian" and "troll" in my comments around here, and I find it very unfortunate that it has to be commentary on something so negative, and I also think it's unfortunate that I'm writing on something that undoubtedly twenty thousand others will have written on. (Lest I be branded unoriginal.)
I'm very sad, right now, to call my home the state that elected Mel Martinez to the U.S. Senate.
But we should backtrack a bit. I was sad when one of my favorite politicians in the world, Bob Graham, failed miserably in his presidential campaign, announced his retirement, and wasn't picked as Kerry's running mate (if he, or Al Gore, had done so, I'm fairly confident many, many circumstances would be different right now.) I was sad when Martinez was nominated by the Republicans over the more capable and more deserving Bill McCollum (I'm no apologist for him, but I'd have preferred him, easily, over Martinez--though, of course, Betty Castor would still have been the one with my vote), and I was sad when he was elected in the first place. But that's all beside the point.
When Martinez was running, my (very Cuban and very Miamian and, as so often follows, very politically conservative and Republican) family and I had little occasional squabbles. "Won't it be great to get a Cuban in the Senate?"
"Yes, it would," I would answer. "But I take it as a personal insult to my heritage that someone as mean-spirited and self-interested as Martinez would be it."
Let's be perfectly clear. My disgust with the current junior senator of my home state stems not from his conservative politics, or even with his lockstep ideological following of the President. (Aside: Though it did bother the hell outta me that he bragged so about that latter--were we supposed to want to elect someone to represent our state who not only had an ideology that was so controlled by that of another, but who was proud of it?) It may make me very unpopular around here, but there are plenty of Republicans and conservatives for whom I have a great deal of respect even when I disagree vastly with their political views. No, my revulsion with Martinez came always from the fact that he was a shill. He was an underqualified and nasty political whore who launched vicious and groundless attacks against his opponents (McCollum as well as Castor--much of my opinion of him was forged as I watched his behavior in the GOP primary campaign) and who used his ethnicity and his (admittedly impressive) personal history for his own political gain. That's what I'd tell my mother, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. (My dad, I'm proud to say, a lifelong Republican, voted for Castor, which, I suppose, helped to make up a little for his vote for Bush.)
After he was elected, in my disappointment, I wrote the senator-elect a letter, in which I basically expressed everything in the preceeding paragraph, and in which I mentioned that I'd be watching his every action like a fucking hawk. (I also mentioned my intent to take his senate seat in twelve years should he still be holding it, but that's beside the point.) And, well, I didn't have to wait too long, did I?
I wish I could say I was more surprised than I was when I learned that the Schiavo Republican talking points came from Martinez's office. But alas, it was not that much of a shock that the politicization of an emotionally excrutiating familial battle over the fate of an ailing woman came from the same man who accused Bill McCollum of being a tool of the radical gay lobby and Betty Castor of harboring terrorists at the University of South Florida.
I always thought that Senator Martinez was not fit to walk the same ground or sit in the same seat as his predecessor. I always thought that he was a low, conniving human being. And I wish that it didn't take this to show me exactly how right I was.