It is always fascinating how, when put on the defensive about the integrity of the election process in Jebbie's home state of Florida, and the fact that Bush lost the popular vote by over a half-million votes, Bush supporters (i) call those who question the accuracy or integrity of the outcome "sore losers", (ii) suggest that the reason why Bush's cheating is excusable was because of some defect of Gore's legal strategy, (iii) accuse the victim of amorality, indecency, lack of ethics, etc., and (iv) question the national vote while arguing that the Florida vote is legit.
It's not enough to win, and to do that under what can charitably be called "questionable circumstances": That is, elected by a vote of 5-4, after getting his rear end kicked nationally (he lost by over 540,000 votes nationally -- a much larger national defeat than any Bush supporter ever imagined possible -- can you imagine how the Bush-ites would be crowing if their guy had BEATEN Gore by 540,000 votes?) and in Florida (where the media driven recounts continue after statutory recounts were shot in the head by the U.S. Supreme Court).
No, instead of having some humility about the manner in which your guy came to become a resident of the White House, you guys are actually gloating about the "victory", as if it is something to gloat about, and then you have to take it one step further by demonizing the opponent and all of his supporters. It's always the same with the right wing -- it's never enough to argue your positions on the issues, i.e., that are correct, or better -- no, the right wing always has to demonize the opposition, to completely destroy anybody who disagrees with it, to call them unpatriotic, unethical, etc.
That is why the public continues to reject (by well over 2 to 1) the more extreme versions of right wing politics. That is why the GOP had to run somebody they could advertise as a "compassionate conservative -- that is, a moderate -- in order to have a chance at winning this election (they came close, too, but still lost, even if the Supreme Court appointed the second place finisher to be President). And that is why Bush is likely to be a one-termer (you see, for every Colin Powell, there is a John Ashcroft who we can count on to kill public support for this illegitimate administration by implementing the right wing vision of what the face of the federal government should be).
Some of my GOP friends have the grace to acknowledge without qualification that Bush lost the national popular vote by a wider margin than they expected, and admit that he probably lost Florida too. These friends will invariably tell me that they are glad Bush won the Supreme Court case and will be President, because they can't stand Gore and would like the tax relief, and they will express their concern about the manner in which the recounts were being conducted and their own perception that the Florida Supreme Court was politically motivated in its decision. Most of them think Bush is a second rate mind, and they have their concerns about him that resemble my own -- but they also believe that as "Chairman of the Board" with a top quality support staff, Bush might succeed (while allowing that they are more than a little nervous about his capacity for the top job and are relived by the more active role Cheney will apparently play in running the government). They do not like what the government would have been like with Gore at the helm, so they like the outcome, but they are not happy that Bush won in the way that he did and admit that it stinks more than a little. I call those people "honest" and while I disagree with them in certain respects, I respect the fact that they can deal with reality.
You guys are another matter. If this situation were reversed - Gore being selected President by the "liberal" wing of the US Supreme Court (in the face of very clear legal principles counseling that the Supreme Court stay out of it) after losing the popular vote by 540,000 votes and "winning" Florida only because he succeeded in a legal strategy that prevented Bush from completing manual recounts that would probably have shown that Bush won (and forgetting about the 30,000 or so "overvotes" that will never be counted, but that would have sealed a clear victory for Bush), you guys would be going completely nuts, literally crawling out of your skins about how Gore, the Democrats and "liberal justices" like David Souter and John Paul Stevens stole it, yadda yadda yadda.
History will stand in judgment of this election, but only after ALL the facts are known. And believe me, with as many reporters pursuing this in Florida as are now pursuing it, the facts about the election and how it was stolen for Dubya in Jebbie's home state will be known, and they won't be pretty. It'll be interesting to see what steps the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in the House and Senate take to suppress this -- we'll see how moral they turn out to be when the bright light of scrutiny shines on what the GOP did to "win" Florida. Indeed, I for one can't wait to see how compassionate conservatism shakes out. My guess is that it will be more or less than same as good old uncompassionate conservatism -- that is, destroy the opponent, cripple the federal government, create as many obstacles for the little guy as possible, get as much for "me" and "those like me" as we can get away with and leave the cleaning up to the next guy (or better yet, the next generation completely). |
