Also, this I think is more geared for tourist traffic than daily commute traffic. Orlando for the parks, West Palm Beach for the shopping (my guess), Ft. Lauderdale and Miami for the cruise ships.
Not in the slightest. Every successful HSR system in the world has plenty of stops in what most people would consider trivial towns. And they all regularly run on average well below their top speed because of it. Those aren't pointless stops; when put in the context of the rest of the cartesian network, they provide significant enough revenue to justify their own existence.
This is true for both HSR lines that are publicly owned as well as pure private systems like in Japan...in other words, they aren't there for political reasons. In fact, the most financially successful lines in the world happen to have the most stops in <50k population towns. If there is any political influence in the matter, it is doing the opposite and passing up stops with little political power, to their financial detriment. Like I said, the real reason for the power in HSR is acceleration, not top speed.
The only thing that defeats the purpose of HSR is when they don't make enough money to justify their existence, making them eventually go away.
(nb - from Cocoa)