Hey CPAC, Florida Sen. Rick Scott here! Look at me: I can be bigoted, too! | Opinion

Oxford dictionary definition of a bigot: “A person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”

Suggested as similar terms: partisan, sectarian, racist.

In Florida, the competition for Bigot of the Year is tight — and, as if there weren’t enough candidates in the running with Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP members of the Florida Legislature acting to suppress minorities — here comes Sen. Rick Scott, presenting from Washington his own brand of social engineering.

The first-term, Boomer senator and former Florida governor, 69, calls his idea of what the United States of America should look like — and how patriotic Americans should act, democracy be damned — “An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America.”

‘It’s me, CPAC!’

It’s an attention-seeking gimmick, timed to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando this weekend, but it’s worthy reading because the document is also a stand-in of sorts for what the Republican Party platform is shaping up to look like for the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.

Made in Florida by Floridians and for Florida voters — and being exported to the rest of the nation (Apologies, sane Americans).

Brace yourselves, it’s back to the 1950s and the culture of subservient women and dominant males, in-the-closet gays, and Blacks who don’t talk about racism, lest they be accused of being “woke,” and, as DeSantis put it at CPAC, suffering from “woke-ism.”

Scott spells it all out without shame.

He wants those gender roles — “God’s design for humanity” — to be tightly defined, he says in point No. 8.

It’s adiós to acceptance of your rainbow families in Scott’s Book of Families, Log Cabin Republicans. Remember that at the ballot box and the next time I interview you, leaders, and you insist the GOP respects LGBTQ rights.

Remember how you swore in 2016 that candidate Donald Trump loved gays, and there was no peril to his presidency?

Scott won’t even pretend to like you.

“The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated,” Scott declares. “To say otherwise is to deny science. The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family.”

This isn’t just blah, blah, blah.

It will be the law in Florida to deny children in elementary school to speak of their gay identity, if the “Don’t Say Gay” bill passes, and it looks like it will, despite the Democrats’ tough fight to water down the restrictive language as much as possible.

Florida ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill banning school discussion of sexual identity is pure evil | Opinion

Dystopian policy

Scott’s fascist verbosity would be a riotous, unbelievable read, sort of like the dystopian fiction of Margaret Atwood, except that his preposterous position paper mimics what other GOP figures are saying at the CPAC convention.

They and the senator are so obviously out of step not only with a younger generation who sees right through their motives — to keep their base agitated and scared of The Other — but future generations of young upcoming voters, too.

Eventually, the vileness of it all will catch up to them. The political pendulum always has a way of finding another pole.

But meanwhile, we have as GOP pillar Rick Scott, a man who presided over the largest Medicare fraud in the nation’s history while CEO of Columbia/HCA, was never charged, then later famously invoked the Fifth Amendment 75 times in a deposition of a civil lawsuit filed against the company.

Scott should be more thankful to the people of Florida, those Black leaders who spearheaded the referendum to restore voting rights to felons, because had Scott been charged, tried and convicted for fraud, at least now he could have his voting rights restored.

But no, instead he’s turning the screw on others and telling the whopper of a lie in his “rescue” paper (Point No. 7) that Democrats are trying to rig elections.

In his state, the only cases of documented electoral fraud so far have come from Republicans in Miami-Dade, the Villages and the Tampa area. They have changed the voter affiliations of Democrats to Republicans without authorization, funded sham candidates to face Democratic incumbents and voted repeatedly for Trump in 2020.

But to Scott, “voting rights” equates with “rigging” elections.

Not to be left behind in the newly ignited false hysteria over abortion, Scott outs the ultimate Republican plan to overturn Roe vs. Wade and end all abortion rights.

He’ll settle for nothing less than an outright ban, as women’s-rights advocates suspect is the real intent of the GOP Florida Legislature with its 15-week ban this session and other limits imposed last session.

“Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies,” he declares. “There are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart.”

False. Zygotes have no heart; they’re a cluster of cells.

But, I’m leaving my favorite Scottism for last.

Now I can also call him comrade.

Scott will impose on Americans patriotism, as they do in Cuba and other totalitarian regimes.

Firsthand witness here, so I know what I’m talking about. Being forced to recite patriotic mottoes and assorted political paraphernalia is the kind of school-sanctioned child abuse that gives children stomachaches that last into adulthood.

“Our kids will say the Pledge of Allegiance, salute the flag, learn that America is a great country,” declares Scott.

In other words, indoctrinate our children.

No room for genuine love, gratitude — or dissent, the hallmark of a democracy.

Be afraid, very afraid, Americans.