Taegan Goddard posted an item yesterday titled "Whig Party Revived", detailing how Steven Gerritzen, "a 39-year-old 'electronics assembler,'" was bringing the party back in order to run against Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) in the 2010 election.
Immediately, I thought to myself, "Terrific! There just isn't enough vocal opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson these days!" But in fact, Gerritzen is running as a candidate for the Florida Whig Party, which turns out to be like a "Tea Party" for calm and approachable moderates who don't mind Scandinavia. He's one of five candidates who will be doing to in 2010.
Wikipedia points out that the Florida Whig Party was once aligned with the Modern Whig Party, which was founded by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a party for disaffected moderates in both the Republican and Democratic Party. (CORRECTION: The Florida Whigs have since split off.) The logo for the Florida Whig Party features an owl -- harkening back to the Whigs of the early 1800s -- and the tagline "A Party For The Rest Of Us," which recalls the episode from the final season of "Seinfeld" that introduced the holiday "Festivus" to America.
In addition to Gerritzen, the Florida Whig Party is fielding four other candidates for the House of Representatives. John Annarumma, Clayton Schock, Stephen Bacon, and Craig Porter, who are running against Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), John Mica (R-Fla.), and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), respectively.
According to the Ocala Star-Banner, Gerritzen is running on a platform that includes support for the Fair Tax and remaking "the American education system in the model of that of Iceland," which, as everyone knows, goes from leikskóli to grunnskóli and then onwards to framhaldsskóli and, eventually, háskóli. So, woo! Whigs are back, baby!
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