Life and politics from the Sunshine State's best city

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Darryl Paulson - page 2

Darryl Paulson has 44 articles published.

Darryl Paulson is Emeritus Professor of Government at USF St. Petersburg.

Darryl Paulson: Will Donald Trump be dumped? — The 25th Amendment

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Each day seems to bring more trouble for President Donald Trump. He fired his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn after just three weeks in his position. Then came the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Numerous other individuals in his administration are supposedly on the chopping block, ranging from Press Secretary Sean Spicer to Chief-of-Staff Reince Priebus to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The FBI investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 election discovered that at least five members of the…

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Darryl Paulson: In defense of politics

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Some readers may be incapable of getting beyond the title of this article. How in the world can anyone defend politicians and politics? It’s easy and, I would argue, necessary. One recent study found that Americans rank politicians lower than cockroaches. I hope Americans are expressing their frustration with politicians, but not their actual sentiments. Would you really prefer a houseful of cockroaches to a few politicians? For 35 years I would introduce my students to politics by claiming politics…

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Darryl Paulson: Will 2018 bring no change or a political tsunami?

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Sometimes political change comes slowly, one drop at a time. That was the 2016 Florida congressional election where Democrats gained a single seat, although the opportunities were everywhere. Sometimes elections result in a political tsunami, where the political landscape is fundamentally altered, and one party replaces the other party as the dominant political force. The 2010 and 2014 midterm elections created a tsunami where Republicans wiped out a substantial Democratic majority and won political control of the House. What will…

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Darryl Paulson: The Founders were right — democracy is flawed

in 2017/Top Headlines by

I expect the title of this op-ed will generate enough hate mail to keep me busy for a month. How can anyone oppose democracy?  If the Founders hated democracy, who am I to disagree? The Founders recognized the inherent dangers of democratic government. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, called democracy “one of the greatest evils.” Alexander Hamilton, better known for being a Broadway phenomena that one of the most significant individuals in the establishment of the…

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Darryl Paulson: President ‘Pants on Fire’

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Although a Republican and a conservative, I was never able to support Donald Trump for president for three reasons. First, he has seldom been a Republican in his lifetime. Second, he is a pragmatist and populist, but not a conservative. Finally, he has difficulty telling the truth. So, what was so appealing about Trump that he won 30 of the 50 states and a majority of the electoral vote? His greatest appeal was being a non-politician in an era where…

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Darryl Paulson: Should the Florida GOP feel blue?

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Florida’s Republican Party has governed Florida for less than a third of the past 150 years. After the Civil War, a coalition of newly enfranchised blacks, a small number of native white Republicans and northern carpetbaggers dominated Florida politics from 1865 to around 1885. After the blacks were stripped of their voting rights at the end of Reconstruction, the Republican Party ceased to be a political force. By 1900, more than 90 percent of black voters were dropped from the…

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Darryl Paulson: Groveland — Florida’s legacy of hate

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

On July 16, 1949, seventeen-year-old Norma Padgett claimed that her husband Willie was assaulted and she was raped by four black males near Groveland, Florida. Groveland is located in Lake County in central Florida. In July 1986, I co-authored the first scholarly article on the Groveland case in the Florida Historical Quarterly, along with historians David Colburn and Steven Lawson. It wasn’t until 2013, when Gilbert King‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Devil in the Grove, focused national attention on Groveland. The…

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