Goodbye Florida, it was great while it lasted

From The New York Times:

MIAMI, April 5 — Gov. Charlie Crist persuaded Florida’s clemency board Thursday to let most felons easily regain their voting rights after prison, saying it was time to leave the “offensive minority” of states that uniformly deny ex-offenders such rights.

Crist will be Florida's last Republican governor.

The change is a major step for Florida, which bans more people from the polls than any other state, but it did not go as far as Mr. Crist had hoped. Two of his fellow Republicans on the clemency board rejected his original plan to grant speedy restoration to everyone except murderers and sex criminals.

So if you beat someone almost to death you can get your voting rights back, but if you get caught with a 35 year old prostitute in a consensual sex act you can't?

Florida has as many as 950,000 disenfranchised ex-offenders — far more than any other state — the vast majority black. Other states have repealed or scaled back similar bans in recent years, but roughly five million felons remain barred from the polls nationwide.

And they're all going to go out and vote Republican? Jeb Bush, despite having the last name Bush, was a smart man and a good governor. He was as much a real conservative as his father and brother are RINOs.

What happened in Florida over the past few years? Did the number of Yankees moving down from New Jersey, New York City, Chicago and other points north finally reach the electoral tipping point and start the state on the politically correct death-spiral?

Whatever the reason the fact that the state's politicians now have to pander to the mostly minority criminal class can be reasonably expected to have repercussions for the people of Florida. The first thing I expect to see is the repeal of Florida's version of the "Castle Doctrine", which is the best in the nation. No more will one be able to legally stand their ground in any place where they have a legal right to be and no more will persons found to have shot in self defense be immune from civil suit from the wounded criminal or the dead criminal's family.

I would next expect to see Florida's "shall issue" policy toward concealed weapons permits to be modified back to a "may issue" status. This will be the natural inclination of the left-wing Democrats which the state's new voters (otherwise known as the new "margin of victory") will elect. The fact that the states new voters will have learned to fear and hate armed citizens even more than police by the experiences gained during their criminal careers and the educations they will have received during their enrollment in the nation's criminal universities (otherwise known as state prison) and the fact that any politician (outside of the panhandle, anyway) who wishes to be elected will have to pander to them will guarantee it.

Crist and his fellow RINOs on the clemency board have bent the state of Florida over and are giving it a royal reaming and they aren't even bothering to use a condom or K-Y Jelly. I hope all the sane Floridians have enjoyed the golden age that they have just lived through, because it is at an end.