American Thinker94%
Republican Party of Florida bends (or breaks?) its own rules to ice out James Fishback 88%
By Olivia Murray87%
7/15/2026, 4:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 37 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Confirmation Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 72.9% saturation with 504 hits. Analysis detected 2,946 faulty-reasoning hits from 691 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 81.9% and a BS Rank of 88% (2,010 of 16,141 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 87.60% of the article peer group.
I don't live in Florida, but I am following the gubernatorial race there, because I really like James Fishback.
On the other hand, I've spoken to people who do live in Florida, and they really like Byron Donalds.
That's all well and good, and we can agree to disagree, but this should disturb everyone:
Why is the Republican Party of Florida campaigning against other Republicans?
This is a violation of their own rules. pic.twitter.com/rBxanGsvb7
- Tim Sharp 🍊 🍊 🇺🇸 (@realtimsharp) July 14, 2026
This is a contested primary race, and the state party has no business inserting its weight and influence to sway the race for its coronated candidate.
It is doing all it can to affect the outcome.
The voters are the ones who select their nominee, at least in theory, but the politicos running the party apparently think they have the right to stack the deck for an outcome they favor.
Furthermore, is this much different from the Democrat party foisting Kamala Harris on their voters?
Taking away their say, dictating who gets the nomination?
I don't think so.
The optics were awful then, and they're awful now.
Now, this is on top of the Florida GOP using a loophole to disinvite James Fishback from a debate, and recently filing a lawsuit against him to boot him off the ballot, both of which are really unacceptable :
Over the course of two weeks, the Republican Party of Florida uninvited Fishback from its major candidate forum in Broward and the sitting lieutenant governor - also seeking the governorship - sued Fishback in order to disqualify him from the race.
But the obvious hypocrisy isn't the only offense-paying for Byron Donalds's campaign mailers is seemingly against the party's own rules.
How can we claim to be a party of law and order, while violating our own "laws" when it suits party interest?
If you look at the Republican Party of Florida's " Party Rules of Procedure ," which were mostly recently updated and adopted on January 10 of this year, you will find that Rule 8 discusses "endorsements," which immediately lists this:
The State Executive Committee may endorse, certify, screen, or recommend candidates in contested Republican primaries only upon unanimous approval of the Executive Board and the approval of 60% of the State Executive Committee at a meeting called for that purpose and at which a quorum is present.
I am aware of no such meeting having occurred.
While "sponsored by" the party may not be an official and technical endorsement, it sure reads like one.
Furthermore, is the state party also providing the same funds to Fishback for mailers, or any of the other candidates for that matter?
As far as I can tell, absolutely not.
Now, this isn't the first time I've seen this sort of scummy behavior from GOP officials-this is exactly what the Arizona GOP did during those all those years I fought it so hard to simply honor the values my "leaders" claimed to uphold: transparency, democracy, free speech, principle, integrity, conservatism, yada, yada, yada.
Sometime around 2019, Martha McSally emerged from the private sector to run for office once again and hand over a third seat to Democrats-she'd lost a solid red seat in 2012 to Ron Barber, and one in 2018 to Kyrsten Sinema.
(Rumor had it that Mitch McConnell has something to do with her reappearance.)
Anyway, the primary race was contested, but just like the Florida GOP is doing now, Arizona party officials unfairly (and against their rules) activated state party resources to ice out the competition, giving McSally an leg up.
She "won" the primary and as we all know, lost to Mark Kelly in November of 2020.
(I assume she's back grifting in the contracting world at this point, but I don't think we've seen the last of her; I'm just waiting for her the haunt and terrorize once again.)
If anyone wonders why this hardcore conservative and right-winger is leaving the Republican Party, stories like this are exactly why.
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Analysis
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