Rick Scott competing to be ‘Bigot of the Year’ with his ‘attention-seeking gimmick’ at CPAC: Florida columnist

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was harshly criticized for bigotry on Friday as the far-right gathers in Orlando for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

"In Florida, the competition for Bigot of the Year is tight — and, as if there weren’t enough candidates in the running with Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP members of the Florida Legislature acting to suppress minorities — here comes Sen. Rick Scott, presenting from Washington his own brand of social engineering," Fabiola Santiago wrote for the Miami Herald. "The first-term, Boomer senator and former Florida governor, 69, calls his idea of what the United States of America should look like — and how patriotic Americans should act, democracy be damned — 'An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America.'"

READ: GOP's Elise Stefanik hit with furious backlash for her 'despicable and reprehensible' statement on Ukraine

Santiago felt the need to apologize to the rest of the country for the Florida congressman's plan.

"It’s an attention-seeking gimmick, timed to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando this weekend, but it’s worthy reading because the document is also a stand-in of sorts for what the Republican Party platform is shaping up to look like for the 2022 midterm elections and beyond," she wrote. "Made in Florida by Floridians and for Florida voters — and being exported to the rest of the nation (Apologies, sane Americans). Brace yourselves, it’s back to the 1950s and the culture of subservient women and dominant males, in-the-closet gays, and Blacks who don’t talk about racism, lest they be accused of being 'woke,' and, as DeSantis put it at CPAC, suffering from 'woke-ism.'"

Read the full column.