{"id":3929,"date":"2005-04-08T10:53:13","date_gmt":"2005-04-08T14:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3929.html"},"modified":"2005-04-08T10:53:13","modified_gmt":"2005-04-08T14:53:13","slug":"sen-mel-pass-the-buck-martinez-of-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sen-mel-pass-the-buck-martinez-of-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Mel ‘Pass the Buck’ Martinez of Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s that old saying? Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a trend<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The campaign ads were bitterly divisive, even by the standards of a bare-knuckle primary, accusing the opponent of then Republican senatorial hopeful Mel Martinez of playing to the “radical homosexual lobby.”<\/p>\n

Martinez blamed the ads on ”young Turks” in his campaign and apologized to his GOP rival. Weeks later Martinez found himself again blaming a staff member after a press release from his campaign likened U.S. immigration agents to ”armed thugs” for seizing Eli\u00c3\u00a1n Gonz\u00c3\u00a1lez from his Miami home in 2000.<\/p>\n

Now, for the third time, Martinez finds himself under fire — and blaming an aide for the conflagration. This time, Martinez said he has accepted the resignation of a staff member in his Senate office for penning the now-infamous political memo that suggested Republicans in Washington could use the plight of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo to bash Democrats, singling out Martinez’s fellow Florida senator, Democrat Bill Nelson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the really funny part? Late Wednesday night, while Martinez was on route to Rome for the pope’s funeral, the senator’s office released a statement saying, “As the senator, I am ultimately responsible for the work of my staff and the product that comes out of this office.”<\/p>\n

It was no doubt written by some overzealous staffer who will be fired immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s that old saying? Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a trend? The campaign ads were bitterly divisive, even by the standards of a bare-knuckle primary, accusing the opponent of then Republican senatorial hopeful Mel Martinez of playing to the “radical homosexual lobby.” Martinez blamed the ads on ”young Turks” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}