There’s a new word being used to describe Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos since he gave up his floundering campaign for the U.S. Senate: relaxed.

Obviously, this is intended as a reflection of his demeanor, rather than his hair, which still looks like it was CGI’d on from a late eighties movie about surfers and valley girls.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote that he ‘isn’t afraid of much these days.’

But what’s more interesting is what’s broadly hinted at in-between the lines.

Three people are primarily responsible for the non-stop disaster that was his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Number one was Haridopolos himself. If you haven’t been following this race, I won’t give anything away, but will simply encourage you to google the terms ‘Haridopolos’ and ‘book deal.’ Trust me. You won’t regret it.

The next person is Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon. Ostensibly, Cannon was a supporter of his Senate counterpart, having endorsed him early. But in practice, the Speaker made Mike’s life a living hell. Right at the very end of the legislative session, when most of the work is done and when reporters are paying the most attention, Cannon brought things to crashing halt, refusing to move on items and sending to the Senate right wing legislation that had no chance of passing the more moderate chamber.

The result was that Haridopolos, instead of looking like the big man in Florida and a strong leader, looked like a hapless loser and also saw his reputation as a true conservative damaged by his failure to pass these late arriving bills through the chamber he supposedly controlled.

All of this seemed designed to benefit the third most responsible party, his rival for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate former state house majority leader Adam Hasner.

Hasner is out office and was able to throw Tea Party-esque bombs without fear of actually having to do anything.

Many political watchers saw this all go down feeling pretty certain that Cannon was setting Haridopolos up on behalf of Hasner.

So now that he is out of the race of for the U.S. Senate, what is Haridopolos doing?

He’s making Cannon look bad by showing up at one of the contentious redistricting meetings going on across the state – after Cannon stayed away for fear of being booed and hissed at.

He’s lamenting the absence of principled conservative in the Senate race and name dropping folks like Jeb Bush and Connie Mack IV. Since Hasner had been trying to portray himself as that very figure, Haridopolos’ statements are clearly aimed at denigrating his erstwhile rival.

Finally, Haridopolos is making it clear that he’s not going to run for Congress or any other office in 2012.

Keep in mind, he desperately wants to hold higher office.

My guess – he’s decided that he wants revenge more. So he’s going to spend next year’s legislative session trying to trip up Cannon and turn the whole session into a nonstop cluserf–k just out of spite.

Should be fun.