Florida is the reality

Column

Winter in Florida means festival time. It seems like every burg has an event of some kind. You name it, somebody celebrates it.

I know next weekend has the big Frog Leg Festival in Fellsmere in Indian River County, as well as the Fiddler Crab Festival in Steinhatchee.

Around here, there are festivals everywhere, including a new one that's been added between Gasparilla and the Strawberry Festival called GOPFEST.

It used to be known as the Florida Republican primary, but it went renegade this year, taking itself off the national schedule of primaries and moving itself to Jan. 31 to become, as they say, relevant.

GOPFEST has played in some smaller venues this year, but Florida is its first venture into the big time. If you've never been to GOPFEST, it's sort of like professional wrestling without the ring or the referee.

Here, you might see them on street corners, but don't give them a buck or buy their paper; they aren't homeless by a long shot. These guys have enough money to buy their own subdivisions.

They will accuse each other of being really bad people who want to starve little children, abandon old people and leave the country exposed to attack from foreign countries.

Then at the end of the month, Florida Republicans, pounded into the ground from endless television attack ads that nobody will take responsibility for and under siege from fellow Republicans for cutting ahead in the primary line, will have to pick someone to face off against an incumbent president.

At the same time — although the field has already been narrowed and the nomination all but conceded to Mitt Romney — Florida will be the first time the candidates go into a large state that shares many of the same problems and issues as the rest of the country.

For the first time, the candidates will be speaking in front of voters who have serious economic problems, unlike what they saw in Iowa, New Hampshire and even South Carolina.

Floridians will ask them about the housing crisis, health care, nuclear power, drilling in the Gulf, immigration and a litany of other issues.

It might be nice to hear a few of their answers before conceding that the game is over.