"Republican coup d'etat looms as Fla. Supremes affirm Gore"
...Florida's heavily-Republican state Legislature is
contemplating a special session to overturn the Supremes
and, by legislative fiat, put Florida Secretary of State and
Bush collaborator Katherine Harris back in the electoral
driver's seat. If it were successful, and Harris were to cut
off the manual re-counts in defiance of the Court, a Bush
win would immediately take on the feel of a coup d'etat.
This would be an immensely unwise move, but Republicans are
desperately determined to put their compliant little lad in
the White House, so all bets are off.
One hopes they would have the simple taste, if nothing
else, to restrain themselves from fracturing a state
government in their quest of control over the US federal
bureaucracy, but no one should depend on it.
There remain several thousand contested ballots containing
dimpled and pregnant chads (no, we can't keep the
distinction, if there is one, straight either) which could
put Gore over the top. The Court's ruling left it up to the
county canvassing boards to decide which of those ballots should be included. It might behove the Republicans to focus
their attack on the contested ballots, and try to get as
many excluded as decency would permit.
But again the Republicans are at a rhetorical disadvantage,
since, ironically, Bush's home state of Texas calls for the
counting of ballots bearing chads which are indented but
not perforated. The 'will of the voter' is embodied in these
indentations, the Texas statute says.
It won't look entirely presidential for Dubya to protest the
illegality of ballots in Florida which would be legal in
Texas, though looking presidential, we must observe, is
something the lad hasn't yet got around to learning. ®
theregister.co.uk |
