One of the chief items on Gov. Rick Scott’s economic agenda is the elimination of the corporate income tax -- and it looks like he will be getting help from a key committee in the Florida House.

Public Policy Polling (PPP), a firm with connections to Democrats at the national level, released a poll Thursday that had President Barack Obama leading the major Republican presidential candidates.

Pro-life leader Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, will announce Thursday that he will challenge President Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

Besides outgoing Gov. Charlie Crist, there were three former governors attending Rick Scott’s inauguration as the state’s 45th governor: Claude Kirk, who was elected in 1966; Bob Martinez, who won office in 1986; and Jeb Bush, who was elected in 1998 and 2002.

While Florida is the fourth largest state and a battleground every presidential election, neither of the major parties has ever included a Floridian on its presidential tickets. There are plenty of reasons for this -- Florida was a member of the Solid South after Reconstruction and took decades to develop, for example. But one of those reasons is that rising political stars from the Sunshine State quickly fizzle.

Websites and organizations of every description are looking to draft former Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, who now hosts a morning news show on MSNBC, into what probably will be a crowded field gunning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Because one of them will be the 18th lieutenant governor of the great state of Florida, we offer our sincerest condolences to Rod Smith and Jennifer Carroll.

Across the country, former governors are seeking to win back their old jobs. While the focus remains on California, where Jerry Brown, who was first elected governor in 1974, is seeking another chance, four other former governors -- Roy Barnes of Georgia, Terry Branstad of Iowa, Robert Erhlich of Maryland and John Kitzhaber of Oregon -- are waging campaigns for their old positions.

Could that happen in Florida?