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What might we call this moment? The politics of pouting? To paraphrase the late comedian Henny Youngman, Take Rick Scott, please!

Floridas most junior Sen. Rick Scott, R-Im Gonna Tell Mom! has been in a self-righteous hissy-fit mode lately, not to mention full-blown hypocrisy.

The Fifth Amendment senator was outraged, shocked, miffed and scandalized, that President Joe Biden had the gall to go on vacation.

It seems the Senates answer to The Day the Earth Stood Stills Gort, slammed Biden for heading off to his Delaware home instead of burning the midnight oil in the White House.

What an inspiration, Scott was, managing to find the time to pull himself away from the poop deck on a luxury yacht he happened to be vacationing on off the coast of Italy to castigate Biden for going to Delaware, which is a mere 111 miles from Washington.

All presidents are frequently knocked for taking time away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. George W. Bush often visited that dreadful ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he spent much of his time clearing brush. Ronald Reagan went to California, to also (sigh) clear brush. (What is it about some presidents and the epidemic of brush to clear?) Barack Obama jetted off to holiday fairly infrequently compared to his peers. And, of course, Donald Trump put in plenty of time at his various resorts, perhaps to spend time caressing top secret classified documents.

Its possible Scott, the Senates token hologram, doesnt realize presidents dont vacation like the rest of us. Where the president goes so does the apparatus of the White House. Unless, perhaps, if youre Donald Trump and you have to be watched constantly to make sure you dont flush the nuclear codes down the toilet. But we digress.

Do you appreciate the sense of ironic balderdash that Scott was lambasting Biden for merely going down the road a bit to his house from a man whose party is less productive in the Senate than Lucille Ball and Ethel on the candy wrapper assembly line. Really now, Uday and Qusay showed up for work more often than the U.S. Senate.

Indeed, Scott himself came in for some flack for running off to Italy instead of performing his own duties as the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is supposed to be working to elect GOP candidates to the worlds foremost collection of right-wing demagogues.

Who knows? Its possible Scott was trying to lock up that critical Amalfi Coast vote.

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To be fair, Scotts job trying to elect Republican candidates has been, uh, challenging inasmuch as the crop of aspirants often looks like Dumb & Dumber meets Triumph of the Will.

The field is littered (literally) with election deniers, sexists, head cases, Trump-loving lawn jockeys and the odd antisemite thrown in just for chuckles.

In Georgia, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker who has been dogged by revelations of children he has sired and then abandoned, spousal abuse and being just plain stupid, said this recently about Democrats climate, health care and taxes bill: Theyre not helping you out because a lot of money, its going to trees. ... Dont we have enough trees around here?

Blake Masters, who is running for the Senate from Arizona, has suggested World War I was instigated by Jewish banking houses and hired two fake electors from the 2020 presidential election to work on his campaign.

Mehmet Oz, vying for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, until recently lived in New Jersey and incumbent Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is still ducking questions about his efforts to hand over a slate of fraudulent electors to then Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to overturn the lawful election of Biden.

Scotts already daunting prospects werent made any easier when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare act of candor, noted the Republicans had a candidate quality problem, which was really another of saying, Were doomed by this assortment of dopes.

That prompted an angry Scott to rebuke McConnell by suggesting his partys leader had committed: An amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately treasonous to the cause.

Is that so? Really? Stating the obvious is cowardice and treasonous, too?

What is truly cowardly is not standing up to the seditious loser of Mar-a-Lago, who is responsible for promoting a slate of grifters, insurrectionists and dimbulbs. What is treasonous is cooking the books to fix the midterm elections and beyond by trying to elect, ahem, to put it gently, semi-fascists to office.

And that, Sen. Scott is like sailing your yacht into an iceberg of tyranny. Bon voyage.

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Sen. Rick Scott exemplifies the politics of pouting | Column - Tampa Bay Times