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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (81463)	11/18/2000 11:26:46 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 769670

I understand your point and agree with it fully. The problem is, I do not think it provides us a compelling enough principle to justify a summary dismissal of those citizens who clearly voted, but whose votes were tossed because of a technical idiosyncrasy. Gore has already used this fact to his advantage. I think the GOP position has some technical accuracy, but also quite a bit of political harm. Obviously the GOP cannot impose rules, and I have not suggested that they impose them. Nevertheless there is a great deal of reasonableness to be exploited by lobbying for a manual recount limited to hanging chads and normal chads. I think most Americans would have, without much question, understood the ridiculousness of counting a chad that is not even punched. It would have been more politically advantageous to the GOP to publicly embrace the recount, aiming to place reasoned limits on it to show magnanimity to those voters who would otherwise have lost their right to vote. It is a veritably unassailable position, and were Gore to have rejected it, he would have been revealed as the conniving politician that he in fact is. Were the choice presented properly, Gore would have accepted it because he would have been unwilling to be that clearly revealed. And Bush would have by now been declared the undisputed POTUS. I have always thought it plain that he has the votes to weather a manual recount, at least one limited as I have described. As it happened, the GOP made a legal and technical argument against recounts in general, leaving Gore to take the broad and understandable position that the recount is needed because we “need a fair vote, where everyone’s vote counts.” Now, despite the GOP’s efforts, we have a manual recount-- one wherein according to you unpunched chads are accepted (Is this really true? I find it hard to believe!) The Dem position has won in the CPO (Court of Public Opinion) and it keeps the public patient enough to allow this fiasco to continue without much outcry. The Dems nearly always talk to the people’s hearts, while Republicans talk to their minds. Dear me. How soon they forget we are taking into account a people, some seventy-two percent of which failed to understand the import of the moral/legal principles overtly broken by their president. The GOP respects the American intellect far too much.