THE FLORIDA EFFECT. HANG ON.

Nature has a genius. 

Take for instance Cicadas. They are a bug that emerges from a life underground in regular cycles. Some are on a seventeen year cycle and others are on a thirteen year cycle. 

Similar to Florida's proclivity to disrupt a national presidential election every fifteen years or so, the Cicadas emerge to disrupt life in the north east for a few months every thirteen or seventeen years. 

In 1968 the Republican part held its national convention in Miami Beach. Richard Nixon, after fending off challenges from Ronald Reagan and George Romney, who had a son who...never mind....anyway Nixon secured the nomination. He became president. He bombed Cambodia illegally and he tapped his opponents in the 1972 election  before being caught and resigning. Years later he had late night phone chats with a young democratic president who was impeached. 
It all began in Florida. 

1968 to 1987 is nineteen years. 

In 1987 Gary Hart was the democratic front runner for  his party's presidential nomination. In February, 1987, New York Governor Mario Cuomo withdrew his name from speculation that he would be a candidate. Hart had a clear path to the nomination. Addressing and dismissing rumors of marital infidelity, he challenged the press to follow him. Be careful what you ask for in life, you may get it.  

Enter Florida. 
A few months later in April, 1987,  the story broke that Hart was having an affair with a Palm Beach woman named Donna Rice. An aptly named yacht "Monkey Business" was involved. The Florida effect struck and Hart was out of the race by May. 

In November 2000, it was Palm Beach again, and hanging chads, and an election that hung in the balance for months as county court judges across the state struggled to certify their county's elections and Florida's secretary of state, who's never been heard from before or since, gained national prominence. 

Yes, if it wasn't for Palm Beach voters, mostly elderly Jewish people who turned out in droves to vote for...Pat Buchanan?!!!... a Nixonian hit man who often fed Nixon lines about a "jewish cabal" in this country, Gore would have carried Palm Beach, and then Florida, and he wouldn't be rich, and fat, and divorced and with a big beard today. And George W Bush would probably be commissioner of Major League Baseball. 

The Florida effect. 

1987 to 2000 is thirteen years. 

Next week Donald Trump and his traveling circus arrives in Florida for a primary that has the ability to just about lock up the nomination for Trump. Should Trump lose, the republican party will be thrown into chaos greater than what we are seeing now. 

Let's recap the election. We have a candidate that is a dead ringer for a local lawyer. 

One of these guys is an expert in ethics. 

We have a candidate who was raised in Miami who is mocked for being "little".

And we have a candidate that pitches water and wine and steaks in his news conferences. 

2000 to 2016? Even we know that is sixteen years. 

Hmmm. Anyone want to bet something weird is NOT going to happen next week?   

Enjoy your spring weekend. 

See you in court.