Florida Democrats: Greer Should Re-focus His Attention to Credit Card Reforms

From FDP:

Today, the Florida Democratic Party sent the following letter responding to Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer's baseless indoctrination claims:

September 3, 2009

James A. Greer, Chairman
Republican Party of Florida
420 E. Jefferson Street
Tallahassee, FL 32301

Dear Chairman Greer,

Come on now. You can't be serious about these baseless indoctrination claims.

While it is clear you have been busy meeting with the 'Birthers', making up claims of death panels in the health insurance reform bills, and now recently begun studying political theory and elementary civics, maybe your time would be better spent working on credit card reform efforts.

More specifically, rather than worrying about President Obama's efforts to inspire our nations' school children to do their homework and speak to them about, "the importance of persisting and succeeding in school," maybe you should spend your time working to track down all the Republican Party of Florida's American Express Platinum cards. You know, the credit cards you gave out to all the Republican Party's elected officials including Speaker Ray Sansom, Sen. Jeff Atwater, Sen. Mike Haridopolos, Rep. Dean Cannon, and many others. In doing so, you transformed your political party into nothing more than a Tammany Hall for Republican leaders as they lived large on the slush fund that is today's Republican Party of Florida.

Or maybe you should focus your efforts on explaining to the IRS how you and other Republican leaders didn't commit tax evasion as you have been reportedly accused of doing by charging personal expenses to the RPOF. But because the only thing that the RPOF has seemingly distributed to more Republican leaders in Florida than AmEx cards is tinfoil hats - now apparently fashioned from your old AmEx Platinum cards - we were concerned that your AmEx Platinum hat blocked your ability to see the reaction to your baseless charges. As such, I wanted to make sure you saw some of the coverage.

PolitiFact.com, a project of the St. Petersburg Times that recently won a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts helping Americans find the truth in politics wrote:

"You might think that would be a harmless topic, and that people across the political spectrum could agree on the importance of education. Not so for the Republican Party of Florida...

We reviewed the study materials but didn't see any mention of controversial issues, let alone any attempt to indoctrinate students in socialism...

But he crossed a line when he said that Obama intended to discuss "plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies" and other policy matters not germane to education. That is factually incorrect, and the party could not offer any support for the statement. For raising the specter of socialist ideology and indoctrination, the party takes its claim to an additional, absurd level. We rate the Republican Party of Florida's statement Pants on Fire!"

And Mark Murray from NBC News wrote on their First Read blog:

"This coming Tuesday, President Obama is set to deliver a speech on education and its importance to students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, VA...

Yet somehow, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, Jim Greer, believes Obama's speech as a platform 'to spread' his 'socialist ideology.'

...Has the state of our political discourse devolved to the point where a president's speech about the importance of education gets called a socialist power grab?"

So, rather than waste all of our time with statements that are no more credible that the craziest of conspiracy theories, maybe you should turn off Glenn Beck, tune out Rush Limbaugh, ignore the Secessionist movement and focus your energy on cleaning up the Republican culture of cronyism and corruption in Tallahassee.

Best wishes,

Eric Jotkoff
Communications Director
Florida Democratic Party