Syndicated columnist and conservative talking head Star Parker wowed a group of tea partiers in the Capitol this afternoon on the opening day of session before making a recruiting stop at Lt. Gov Jennifer Carroll’s office.

Parker finished her half-hour informal speech with high praise for Carroll, a former state House member and retired Navy office whom Parker said she’s met once before.

“I’m hoping that she is in agreement with all of the ideas of limited size and scope of government because if she is I wanted to rumble out her name as we’re going around the country thinking that we need to find somebody ethnic to be the vice president – Republicans are going to win and all. She would be a better pick, would be my opinion,” Parker said, who met with Carroll for about five minutes, according to Gov. Rick Scott’s staff. Parker was in town briefly and flew into Tallahassee for a South Georgia meeting, she said.

“This is a quality person, decorated military, worked her butt off to get to the state House and now as lieutenant governor is the first in the country. We’ve never in this country had a black, conservative, female lieutenant governor. I think that is worth a couple of news stories,” said Parker, a syndicated columnist and FoxNews pundit.

As an added bonus, Parker said, “she’s from one of our critical states.” Florida, of course, is a key swing state in this year’s presidential election.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is back in the (state) Capitol in a new office more than a dozen floors above his old digs in the Speaker’s office this morning, hours before state lawmakers kick off the 2012 legislative session.

Rubio, a Miami native and former House Speaker who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, said he set up shop in the Capitol to stay close to what’s going on in the state.

“There’s no doubt about it. We don’t want to lose touch with the state. From my experience as the speaker and as a legislator, there are a lot of issues that the state is facing that…overlap with federal issues” including the Everglades and the space program, Rubio said. “I think being here is going to allow us to have a person on the ground especially during the legislative session but throughout the year that’s literally just a few doors away from key decision makers at the state level.”

Rubio shook hands with lobbyists, well-wishers and Capitol staffers but also got an earful from a group of tea partiers unhappy with his votes supporting the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that some critics believe gives the federal government the ability to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens accused of terrorism.

Rubio – whose tea party support helped clinched his U.S. Senate victory – argued that the law does not do that.

“I would never have voted for a bill that allows them to detain innocent American citizens in military tribunals. It’s just not true. We looked at that issue back and forth, left and right, up and down. It’s just not true. I would never support it if it did,” Rubio insisted.

But Paul Henry, a Monticello tea party activist and former state trooper, disagreed.

“What Sen. Rubio’s not aware of is this exact language that’s in there,” Henry said later.

One section of the law reads: “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.”

“But that does not prohibit them (from doing it),” Henry said. “I’m not required to drive a car. I could walk.”

Rubio’s votes disappointed some members of the dozens of tea party groups gathering in the Capitol for the session’s opening day, but they insisted they’re not giving up.

“We helped get the Republicans in the House and they still voted for the debt ceiling. We helped get so-called conservatives get elected and they vote for the Patriot Act. I think you are seeing a lot of widespread discouragement of all the energy spent to get to this point and we still have to go back and tell them what being a conservative means,” said Henry Kelley, a Tea Party Network leader from Fort Walton Beach.

Gov. Rick Scott ripped the Obama administration Friday for rejecting Florida’s application for Race to the Top education dollars, deriding the decision as stemming from the state’s refusal to accept the money “with strings attached.”

Nine states were authorized by federal officials to share $500 million in grant money aimed at accelerating  improvements in early childhood programs. California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state will get the dollars to make strides in pre-kindergarten education.

Scott said he suspected Florida was turned down because the state did not commit to continuing programs after federal dollars expired — a move he said was aimed at avoiding making state taxpayers pick up the tab for new government services.

 ”When Florida’s application was submitted for the grant in October, we made it clear that we would not accept grant money with strings attached, additional state spending obligations, or requirements that created new burdensome regulations on private providers,” Scott said.

 ” We stuck to our principles, and unfortunately our insistence against irresponsibly using one-time dollars for recurring government programs did not win the favor of the administration in Washington,” he added.

Race to the Top, the centerpiece of Obama’s education policies, has proved a thorny issue for Republicans. In the GOP presidential field, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a staunch opponent, while Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, is a fan.

The funding approach also supports many of the early-learning measures promoted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and state legislative leaders.

Still, Scott defied tea party activists in October when he submitted the state’s application.  But he was lured by the prospect of winning as much as $100 million in federal cash for the state — in a year when he wants to pump-up Florida K-12 spending by $1 billion.

Scott insisted, though, that he wouldn’t go along with federal officials dictating terms for how the state spent the money.

Florida won a $700 million federal grant under the program last year, in its second attempt at landing the cash. But Scott has pushed back millions of dollars in aid tied to Obama’s health care overhaul. The state’s Tea Party Network, also openly demanded in the fall that he steer clear of the Race to the Top effort.

But for all the line-in-the-sand drawing, Scott in September agreed to some conditions in advance of the application.

At Scott’s urging, the Legislative Budget Commission accepted a $3.4 million federal grant under the Affordable Care Act to provide home visiting services to at-risk families. Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, was among those urging against the move, saying the program’s mission was murky, and he feared it could result in the state facing additional costs.

Conservative U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is routinely branded an extremist by Democrats. But Politico.com weighs in today with an article citing West’s departures from tea party orthodoxy on the debt ceiling and other issues as evidence that he has “discovered nuance in politics” and “proved to be more ideologically dynamic and flexible than any of his caricaturists imagined.”

The article also quotes fellow Florida Rep. John Mica describing freshman West as “like a rock star. I’ve been here 19 years, and nobody knows who the hell I am. But everybody knows who he is.”

West apparently likes the article. He posted a link to it on his Facebook page.

“Don’t get too nuanced, Allen,” said one commenter.

With his popularity on the rise, conservative iconoclast Newt Gingrich will address a tea party crowd at The Landing in Jacksonville this afternoon.

The event takes place as Gingrich is on the defensive for his relationship with Freddie Mac. Bloomberg News reported this week that the former U.S. House Speaker earned at least $1.6 million over nearly a decade as a consultant for the beleaguered government-backed mortgage company. His GOP opponents in the presidential primary have hammered Freddie Mac for its role in the mortgage meltdown and the mortgage giant has symbolized for conservatives government overreach.

Gingrich himself has blamed Freddie Mac for the housing collapse.

Meanwhile, Gingrich’s star is on the rise among GOP voters, according to two recent national polls. One poll found that Gingrich has the best chance among GOP voters to defeat President Barack Obama next year. And another showed Gingrich’s popularity jumped 8 points from last month, trailing Mitt Romney by just two percentage points and making the race a statistical dead heat.

The First Coast Tea Party event in Jacksonville begins at 2 p.m. and was moved to riverfront site because of “the size of the event,” according to the Zamar Conference Center, where the gathering was originally scheduled, website.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is always at or near the top of Republican presidential polls in Florida and nationwide. Intrade.com puts the chances of Romney winning the GOP nomination at around 70 percent. He’s the only Republican candidate President Obama‘s supporters have invested any significant time in attacking.

But Romney clearly hasn’t closed the deal with much of the Republican Party’s conservative base.

“Romney still has a lot of work to do to get people behind him if he gets the nomination. They might vote for him, but they won’t work for him,” says Brendan Steinhauser of the tea party-aligned conservative group FreedomWorks.

Others say Republican desire to oust Obama will override any misgivings about Romney.

Read about it by clicking here.

Florida voters have unfavorable views of both the conservative tea party movement and left-leaning Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

And while Floridians are nearly evenly split when asked if they view President Obama favorably or unfavorably (47 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable), they are decidedly negative in evaluating his job performance and reelection worthiness.

Only 41 percent of Floridians approve of the way Obama is handling his job, with 52 percent disapproving. And by a 51-to-43 percent margin, Florida voters say Obama does not deserve to be reelected next year.

Gov. Rick Scott‘s gets a 36 percent job-approval rating and a 50 percent disapproval. He’s not on the ballot until 2014.

Asked about the tea party movement, 34 percent of Floridians said they have a favorable view and 40 percent said they have an unfavorable view — a 6-point negative spread.

The Occupy movement was viewed favorably by 30 percent and unfavorably by 39 percent — a 9-point negative spread.

The Republican and Democratic parties and GOP presidential contenders Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are also under water in their favorability ratings. Herman Cain‘s score is barely positive, with 36 percent of Floridians saying they view him favorably and 34 unfavorably.

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With a new poll Wednesday showing Barack Obama‘s popularity in Florida melting like ice on a July day, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz took to the airwaves in his defense.

On the same day a Quinnipiac University poll showed Floridians disapproving of his performance as president, 57-39 percent, Wasserman Schultz, a South Florida congresswoman, offered a Joe Namath-like guarantee that Florida will remain in Obama’s camp.

“Barack Obama will take my home state of Florida again,”  Wasserman Schultz assured on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends.  She added, “we need the Republicans to stop allowing themselves to be controlled by the extremists in the Tea Party.”

Obama’s popularity in the Sunshine State reached the lowest mark of his presidency in the latest Quinnipiac poll, which as recently as late May found the president drawing a 51-43 percent approval rating from Florida.

The Republican presidential field takes part in another debate tonight — this time from Tampa — but Florida Gov. Rick Scott is mostly sticking with the same advice he’s offered for those heading into earlier exchanges.

“I think the biggest question for everybody in the country — if the Democrats were having a debate, it’d be the same same issue — it’d be about jobs. Who’s got the best blueprint for job creation?”  Scott said Monday.

Scott, a big supporter of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also may have attempted to come to the defense of his favorite Republican, who tonight could have to clarify his recent debate comment that Social Security was effectively a “Ponzi scheme,” certain to run out of money. Calls for overhauling Social Security are eyed warily in Florida and other states with heavy senior populations.

“Without jobs, we don’t have any money for any the safety nets we have,” Scott explained. “We can’t afford any of the government programs we have. So it’s about jobs.”

Tonight’s CNN/Tea Party Express debate begins at 8 p.m. on CNN. It will take place at the State Fairgrounds in Tampa. Scott said he plans to watch the talk-a-thon, but won’t attend. He’s traveling Monday in advance of Republican Governors’ Association meetings.

 

Sen. Joe Negron, the Stuart Republican whose district includes parts of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, was named “legislator of  the year,” by the Florida branch of Americans for Prosperty, the conservative advocacy organization.

Negron shared the title with Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, both of whom were feted for their efforts to tilt the state Legislature further to the right. AFP, which has emerged as a guide and financial backer of the tea party movement, was founded by conservative billionaire energy titans, David and Charles Koch.

Seventy-nine legislators — all Republicans – received A+ scores from the group. Every Democrat drew a failing grade — except Rep. Leonard Bembry, D-Greenville, who was given a D by AFP.

Slade O’Brien, AFP’s Palm Beach County-based state director, said Negron was pivotal in the Legislature’s efforts to revamp Medicaid, while also steering the state toward reducing the size of government and cutting taxes.

Democrats drawing lousy marks, “show hostility towards the free market and protecting the individual liberties on which our country was founded,” O’Brien said.

U.S. Rep. and tea party superstar Allen West, R-Plantation, says he’s reconsidering his membership in the Congressional Black Caucus because of disparaging remarks from caucus members toward the tea party movement.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., recently said the tea party “can go straight to hell.”

U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., said some in the tea party would like to see blacks “hanging on a tree.”

West, the only Republican in the Black Caucus, sent a letter to caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., calling on him “to both condemn these types of hate-filled comments, and to disassociate the Congressional Black Caucus from these types of remarks. Otherwise, I will have to seriously reconsider my membership within the organization.”

Adds West in his letter: “Congressman Carson’s desire to generally criticize a large grassroots group as racist is baseless and desperate. When individuals believe they are defeated in a political disagreement, they normally resort to race-baiting, which in my opinion is in itself racist.

“As a member of the CBC, I look forward to working with you to help end this practice. All of us, especially Congressman Carson, Congresswoman Waters and others who have engaged in racially-motivated rhetoric, should follow the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not the example of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”

Tea party celebrity and U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is taking heat from the movement because of his early support for Speaker John Boehner‘s debt-ceiling plan. Tea party leaders targeted West and three other GOP freshmen on Thursday, calling them “defectors” from the fiscally conservative cause.

West, in a radio interview this morning with nationally syndicated conservative talker Laura Ingraham, reiterated his support for Boehner’s plan.

“If they want to bring forth a primary challenge, then so be it,” West said of miffed tea partyers.

“I’m going to stand with this Boehner plan and once again, if the folks who one minute they’re saying that I’m their ‘tea party hero’ and what, three or four days later ‘I’m a tea party defector.’ That kind of schizophrenia, I’m not going to get involved in it.”

Ingraham told West that “you’re being hit by the very people who should be at your side.”

Some big players in the tea party movement are miffed that U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, has come out in favor of a debt-ceiling plan by House Speaker John Boehner that’s too weak for many conservatives.

UPDATE: West defended the Boehner plan in a teleconference with constituents tonight, telling one tea party critic: “Let’s be realistic in our expectations. It takes 5 miles to turn an aircraft carrier around. I can tell you this: We have started that motion.”

Earlier tonight, some Florida tea party leaders got this email: “Guys, What can we do to pull Allen West off of this terrible Boehner debt plan? We only need to peel off 6 House Republicans to kill this Boehner deal. Can we get some tea party calls and office visits going. There is no reason for him to support this deal. Need your help!”

The email was sent by Brendan Steinhauser of FreedomWorks, the Washington-based conservative group that has provided key organizational and strategic help to the tea party movement.

The Boehner plan is expected to come up for a House vote Thursday and faces unclear prospects among Republicans. Steinhauser hopes debt-ceiling plans by Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fail, which he says would force the Democratic-led Senate to take up the “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill passed by the GOP-led House earlier this month.

House Speaker John Boehner‘s two-step debt-ceiling plan got a rough reception from many conservatives and the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday, forcing GOP leadership to put off a vote that had been slated for today.

But Politico is reporting today that support for the Boehner plan from members of the tea party-dominated House GOP freshman class “appears to be building” after a GOP conference meeting this morning. The Politico story quotes U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, the national tea party celeb who declared himself an early backer of the Boehner plan on Tuesday.

Freshman tea party U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is supporting House Speaker John Boehner‘s new debt-ceiling plan — potentially providing important cover for other tea partyers who say the plan doesn’t go far enough.

West announced his support Monday night via Twitter, tweeting: “I will support the new debt deal- it has enough of what I need including no tax hikes, spending caps and a step toward a balanced budget.”

Boehner’s plan calls for $1.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years in exchange for a $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. That means Congress will have to revisit the debt ceiling early next year. President Obama wants a debt ceiling increase that will get beyond the 2012 election.

It’s not clear today whether Boehner’s plan has enough Republican votes to pass. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-S.C., head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, came out against it.

Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, is studying the Boehner plan and hasn’t announced a position, his office said.

FreedomWorks, the Washington-based group that has played a key role in advising and organizing the tea party movement, is endorsing former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner in the 2012 GOP Senate primary after finding “overwhelming” support for Hasner among its Florida members.

The endorsement from FreedomWorks PAC comes as the Hasner camp seeks to define the four-candidate GOP Senate primary as Round Two of the Marco Rubio-Charlie Crist 2010 GOP primary. With Mike Haridopolos dropping out today, Hasner adviser Rick Wilson called chief Hasner rival George LeMieux “the original Charlie Crist Republican.”

South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson is relaying word that Donald Trump will pay more than $6,000 that Boca Raton says it is owed for police officers and barriers that were deployed for an April South Florida Tea Party rally that Trump keynoted.

Wilkinson questioned the charges said his group didn’t have the money in its coffers to cover them.

“We’re working on paying it,” Wilkinson said earlier this month. “We don’t have the money right now, but we’re good at paying our bills.”

Here’s a statement from Trump adviser Michael Cohen as reported in Politico:

“An unexpectedly large number of citizens peaceably assembled at the Boca Tea party event, hosted by Everett Wilkinson, that drew a crowd in excess of 5000 people. Mr. Trump is honored that so many people came to hear him speak on important political and social issues. Mr. Trump does not want any citizen group to be disparaged or burdened for exercising their first amendment right and has agreed to personally cover the full obligation to the City of Boca Raton.”

Pam Wohlschlegel, who quit Monday as Palm Beach County director of the South Florida Tea Party, announced this morning that she’s heading a new group called the Palm Beach County Tea Party.

Wohlshclegel resigned after South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson ripped the House GOP Medicare overhaul plan as a “public policy nightmare.” Wilkinson’s comments were the latest example of his tendency to butt heads with others in the tea party movement.

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Pam Wohlschlegel, the director of the Palm Beach County chapter of the South Florida Tea Party, has resigned, saying she disagrees with Chairman Everett Wilkinson‘s recent declaration that Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan ‘s Medicare overhaul plan is a “public policy nightmare.”

Wohlschlegel, who helped organize tea party events and groups in Palm Beach County but didn’t have a policy-setting role, announced her resignation via an e-mail this evening that doesn’t cite specific reasons for her departure. She revealed more in an interview.

“If it were my organization, I would not speak for the organization without taking a poll and I don’t necessarily think that his positions on such things as E-Verify and his latest position on Paul Ryan, I don’t think it necessarily reflects the feelings of all the members of the organization,” Wohlschlegel said.

In addition to opposing the Ryan plan, which is popular with many in the tea party movement, Wilkinson bucked tea party sentiment by opposing a bill to require that businesses use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers.

Wilkinson said his criticism of the Ryan budget plan, sent late Thursday night in a “Dear Patriots” e-mail and later posted on the South Florida Tea Party website, “was in my name, it was not in the name of the tea party in general.”

South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson broke with many in the tea party movement by slamming House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan‘s Medicare overhaul plan as a “public policy nightmare” that could lead to “huge Democratic wins in 2012.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

Wilkinson said today he chatted with some high-profile foes of the Ryan plan — Donald Trump, Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone, and political strategist and Fox News analyst Dick Morris – as well as well-placed supporters of it before forming an opinion and weighing in against the Ryan plan.

Trump courted tea party support while weighing a GOP presidential bid and headlined an April 16 South Florida Tea Party rally in Boca Raton. The city and Wilkinson are still at odds over an outstanding bill of more than $6,000 for barriers and police officers deployed for the event.

Trump recently predicted the Ryan plan will lead to a “Republican disaster” in the 2012 elections. Morris has panned the Ryan plan as well.