From the Panama City News Herald

Florida Republicans aren’t wasting any time flexing the stronger political muscle they acquired in Tuesday’s elections. The first person to feel the effects will be former Republican and current GOP bête noire Gov. Charlie Crist.

Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos announced Thursday that they will hold a special one-day session of the Legislature on Nov. 16 to override Crist vetoes on nine select bills. They aren’t the most controversial measures from the 2010 regular session, such as the one on teacher merit pay and tenure (Senate Bill 6). Rather, they are bills that passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support, only to be shot down by the governor’s veto pen.

It will be a historic moment. The Legislature has overridden a governor’s veto only twice in the last 24 years, with the last one coming in 1997.

You could ask whether Republican leaders are looking to inflict a little payback on Crist, who left the party in April when polls showed he was trailing Marco Rubio by a wide margin in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Crist launched an independent run for the Senate, not only disavowing many of the conservative positions he once held but also bad-mouthing his former colleagues. Rubio got the last laugh, easily winning the general election last Tuesday.

It’s fair to question, though, how many of Crist’s vetoes were made less on the policy merits and more with an eye on becoming an independent.

Cannon insisted the overrides were based on merit. "I don’t take any pleasure from the political components as much as I do, these are good ideas," he said Thursday.

Regardless of the motivations, Republicans are going to use their raw power, a new veto-proof majority, to take advantage of the lamest of lame ducks, a governor in the waning weeks of his term in office who long ago exhausted his political capital.

The vetoes slated for override include bills that involved funding for a Shands Hospital, separating curbside yard trash and regular waste, hurricane-proofing homes and workers compensation laws.