Blame it on Frank

 George Washington warned us.
 

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally."

 "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it."

 "One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to ...render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."

"They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

-- from George Washington's Final Address as President, 1796

Why do I bring this up?  Because 214 years later, partisan politics is as ugly as Washington warned, and perhaps more twisted and vile than he could have imagined.

Check out this little tidbit, from today's Miami Herald:

Even Republicans who voted for Scott were wary of him.

``I wouldn't have voted for him if I had another Republican to choose from,'' said Frank Paruas, a 38-year-old Kendall Republican. ``I think Alex Sink isn't a bad person. But I just couldn't vote for anyone in the Democratic party right now.''

You are reading this correctly: even though, like most informed  people, he believed that Rick Scott probably committed Medicare fraud, Frank Paruas voted for a probable criminal rather than vote for a competent executive with a clean record who belonged to the other party.

We should have listened to George.

And Frank - in the coming years, remember this: it's all your fault.  And I will never, ever let you forget it.  Every time Scott is caught playing fast and loose, I will remind the world that you , Frank Paruas, voted for Scott.  Every time one of his appointees is investigated for fraud or corruption, I'll be gloating "Frank's boy does it again!"

You see, I've learned that simply telling the world at large the truth doesn't make a damned bit of difference. So from now on, it's all aimed at you, Frank.

Welcome to the Hell that you made by voting for a criminal.