Let's see ... Mother Jones turns out a story ripping the tea party and Rick Scott, and guess what happens? 

It gets wide play Wednesday among mainstreamers like The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times. And why not? It advances the left-sided, anti-Scott agenda for them. All they have to do is blog out the headline deck with a link to the story. Never have to add a word of their own prose.

Anybody surprised?

Mother Jones, nicknamed MoJo, is the magazine named after Mary Harris Jones, an Irish trade-union activist associated with the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Social Democratic Party, the Socialist Party of America, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Western Federation of Miners.

It's published by the nonprofit Foundation for National Progress.

I know it's plain wrong of me to say this, because everybody knows it's only the crazy conservatives who slant stories clear off the screen. But here it is: As propaganda machines go, MoJo makes the John Birch Society's New American look like a bland subway-station throwaway.

Wednesday's "gotcha" on Florida's governor couldn't be a more perfect example. 

First comes the headline, "What's It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida!" Then the subheads: "Kids locked up in nursing homes. Leaky sewers. Mosquitoes unleashed. The Sunshine State has buyer's remorse." The story follows with a litany of out-of-context "governor-gaffes," one after another, that turn Florida into an apocalyptic nightmare.

Heaven forbid Mother Jones should mention that Rick Scott was keeping the promises he made to the people who elected him. He won on a platform of  reducing the state's debt, championing reforms, improving the climate for job creation, reducing taxes and shifting money to the No. 1 priority: luring new jobs and reducing unemployment.

The governor began his term in an economic abyss, for heaven's sake, in an atmosphere of fear and distrust even among members of his own party. Yet in the first 20 months, with his policies in force, look at the things that have gone right:

-- Unemployment has dropped 2.3 percent, from 11.1 percent to 8.8 percent. And some 153,000 jobs have been created. It might not all be his doing, but some of it surely is, and he fought hard to make it so.

-- He overcame huge budget deficits and balanced his first two state budgets without raising taxes.

-- He required strict accountability in every budget of every department in his administration.

-- His stringent budget cuts during the first year of his term gave him room to expand his options, including the ability to provide an additional $1 billion in education funding.

Not that Mother Jones is going to stray from its agenda. The liberal media have the bit between their teeth now.

Florida is an important state. Who governs it, who occupies the mansion, matters in Washington and matters desperately behind the closed doors of both national parties. Besides that, in spite of still-low approval numbers, Rick Scott has etched his mark in this state and can't be counted out.

He should expect 18 more months of digging trenches against the progressive media's Biggest Guns.



Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.