Strange Case Of Hypocrisy In the Florida Orange County Republican Executive Committee

Orange County Republican Executive Committee Chairman Lew Oliver has 'got some 'splainin' to do! He sent out a mailer to central Florida Republicans reminding them that Orange County Mayoral candidate Bill Segal is a hardcore Democrat. The race is non-partisan meaning there are no R's or D's listed next to candidates' names.

Seems reasonable enough. So why the reference to Ricky Ricardo and his oft heard question to hapless wife Lucy?

Simple. While Lew Oliver prattles on about how "Bill Segal = Obama/ACORN" he seems to have forgotten something. His State Committeeman gave the MAXIMUM donation to Bill Segal's election campaign! That's right, Jerry Braley (former Republican Executive Committee Chair and it's current State Committeeman) saw no problem supporting the evil liberal Bill Segal.

One has to wonder about how serious Florida Republicans are about embracing constitutional conservative principles when one of its highest officials gives generously to Democrats.

Chairman Jim Greer Continues Strong-Arming Florida Republican Party

This evening Brevard County Republican Executive Committee Chairman Jason Steele was interviewed about Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer's attempts to shut down the 2010 Republican Party Primary process. Greer has been trying to shut out former House Speaker Marco Rubio from opposing Gov. Charlie Crist for in the US Senate race (link to broadcast below).

I wanted to add my comments as well, because this ominous trend of Republican brass attempting to intimidate candidates in primary elections holds tremendous challenges for us as Party grassroots activists. Greer contends that some primaries are just to expensive and distracting. Instead he wants to go ahead and pick for us the candidates that we should vote for.

The problem with this is that now, especially when the Party is trying to figure out if it wants a more moderate (some call it Democrat Lite) Republicanism or a more conservative brand, the decision is not going to be made by the Party members themselves. This is precisely what Primaries are supposed to solve. But Boss Greer has other intentions.

In this interview I was struck by the lack of any coherent or logical argument by Greer to support his position. His constant 'uh's' and superficial replies either show him to be unable to argue his position or else he just considers that his opinion is the only one that matters.

Unfortunately the interviewer did not ask the hard questions of exactly what voice do the Party members have in this system. We must challenge Greer and the rest of the Party bigwigs that they are not to strip us of our rights to have fair and open primaries.

I commend Chairman Steele for beginning a drive to get county chairman to pass resolutions against these tactics. But even more I think that we as Florida Republicans have just as much right and duty to make sure our voices are heard as well.

Here is the phone number for the RPOF in Tallahassee (850)222-7920. And here is their email form http://www.rpof.org/contact.php (caution: you must go to this link and then use their form to email). I'd like to ask everyone to tell Chairman Greer to keep out of the Florida Primary.

Chairman Greer also makes a 'misstatement' of fact in the interview. One was that no resources of the RPOF have been used to favor Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio. Actually the RPOF has utilized it's massive email lists to repeatedly trumpet Crist as the best choice for the US Senate. Not one email has gone out reminding members of Rubio's candidacy.

Please listen to the interview below and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.wmfe.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9501&news_iv_ctrl=1441

P.S. I'm writing this immediately following the interview. As yet the podcast is not yet loaded onto the site.

Nick Egoroff
Orlando Liberty Organizer