Friday, July 9, 2010

Rubio's "By the Numbers" Response to Crist's Special Session

After yesterday's announcement from Charlie Crist that he was calling a special session of the Legislature for the purpose of drafting a constitutional amendment to ban oil drilling, Marco Rubio's campaign has responded with a fun and snarky "By the Numbers" analysis of Crist's blatant pandering:

By the numbers, Charlie Crist’s call for a special session to ban something that is already banned in Florida is nothing more than another Washington-style political gimmick meant to distract from the real issues confronting the Gulf Coast:
0 oil spills will be prevented by Charlie Crist’s constitutional amendment.
0 real world impact of Charlie Crist’s constitutional amendment banning something already banned in state law.
0 tourists will re-book their travel to Florida because of Charlie Crist’s constitutional amendment.
0 skimmers will be freed-up because of Charlie Crist’s political photo-op.
0 fishermen in the Panhandle would be helped because of Charlie Crist’s constitutional amendment.
0 claims will be sped up to impacted Florida Gulf Coast residents and businesses because of Charlie Crist’s constitutional amendment.
0 small businesses will be able to keep their doors open because of a constitutional amendment.
2 complete flip-flops Charlie Crist has done on offshore drilling.
2 points down in the polls is where Crist discovered he was in the U.S. Senate race when he decided to call for a special session.
4 hours between the release of a bad poll for Crist and his call for a political sideshow special session.
$120,000 will be spent by taxpayers for Charlie Crist’s political photo-op special session.
The Orlando Sentinel pointed out  on its Political Pulse blog today that the Rubio campaign's calculation that $120,000 of our money would be wasted on the special session was "probably low:"

...The cost of a special session was calculated at $40,000-per-day by a Tallahassee Democrat reporter 20 years ago.  While no one has done the calculations to update the number — based largely on travel costs and per-diem of $133-a-day per legislator — the cost has almost certainly risen. The St. Petersburg Times used a $50,000-per-day number this morning — which for a 4-day session would work out to a total of $200,000 — but even that may be low.
Here's the St. Pete Times article referenced by the Sentinel.

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