The Left should be paying attention to Florida. If you’ve ever desired a nightmarish vision of the legislature-driven austerity measures sure to proliferate around the country in the coming years, look no further than the Sunshine State’s 2012 budget. With little protest, Florida lawmakers are eviscerating public welfare and rapidly turning the state into a haven for the exploitation of workers. Despite the laughable “moderation narratives” now propagating in local newspaper coverage — which depict it as part of a trend away from rightist absolutism — the 2012 budget is nothing less than an unqualified victory for free market zealots everywhere: its legislatively-imposed austerity measures and multi-billion dollar tax cuts will no doubt serve as a useful model for other “business friendly” Southern states and the country as a whole.

For thirteen consecutive years, Republicans have controlled the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature. Florida is effectively a one-party dictatorship: local papers treat any mild disagreement among the conservative faithful as evidence of moderate tendencies in the legislature. The reality is that Governor Rick Scott, elected during the 2010 wave of Tea Party victories, is so stridently right-wing (and the state Democrats so weak) that opposition to the leadership’s more draconian proposals inevitably comes from other Republicans. A few, such as centrist Paula Dockery, have fairly consistently voiced disapproval of their colleagues’ more egregious actions, but this dissent is highly circumstantial: decisive opposition to the notorious prison privatization plan, for instance, came from two Senators with direct ties to law enforcement. And the Parent Empowerment Act, a highly controversial proposal allowing for the swift conversion of neighborhood schools into publicly-funded charters via parental petition, was scuttled not by a united front of political moderates, but by intra-Republican skepticism.

As the national debate over forced transvaginal ultrasound demonstrated, new legislation is often tactically front-loaded with all sorts of detestable right-wing red meat. When a public outcry inevitably ensues, the offensive rider is excised with much fanfare, leaving the reactionary core intact. Immiseration goes down smoother if everyone can say they passed up at least one poisoned apple.