Winning by intimidation
A Republican riot squad in Miami shows GOP will try to
win at all cost
GOP protests, under the direction of a mobile strategy team, shifted from Miami to Broward County Friday. A sheriff's deputy holds back a crowd of Bush supporters as Democratic congressman Peter Deutsch tries to speak to reporters.
By Eric Alterman
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Nov. 24 — It’s getting harder and harder to believe one’s eyes and ears as George Bush, James Baker and the Republicans grow ever more brazen in their effort to seize the presidency with or without a lawful mandate. As amazing as this sounds, it is distinctly possible that the 2000 election will be decided by a bunch of riotous thugs, operating under the direct control of the Republican Party.
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What was an uninspired campaign for the presidency has become an absolutely critical fight for democracy. Gore and Lieberman must ignore pundits and party hack who say they must surrender.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT OUTRAGE occurred Wednesday, when ABC News correspondent Bill Redeker discovered that Republican operatives, working out of a Florida-based mobile home, had sent in busloads of hooligans to shut down by force the court-ordered Miami-Dade recount at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center. Republican operatives also set up telephone banks to urge their footsoldiers to join in the riot. Miami’s most important Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi, issued a summons to all pro-Republican Cuban-Americans to come stir the pot further, with charges of anti-Latino racism against the canvassing board.
INTIMIDATION AND FORCE
The mob chased down Joe Geller, chairman of the local Democratic Party, because they falsely believed he had tried to steal a ballot. He required a police escort to escape. Louis Rosero, a Democratic aide, says he was punched and kicked by the Republican goons. Others were trampled to the floor as the mob tried to break down the doors of the room outside the office of the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections where the votes were being counted.
MOBILE TERROR
Do you approve of the GOP's tactics in pursuit of a victory for George W. Bush?
Yes. They should use any means necessary to win the White House.
No. They should drop the hostilities and let the courts decide how to resolve voting disputes.
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Do you approve of the GOP's tactics in pursuit of a victory for George W. Bush?
* 8198 responses
Yes. They should use any means necessary to win the White House.
44%
No. They should drop the hostilities and let the courts decide how to resolve voting disputes.
56%
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When it was over, the rule of the mob was triumphant. The three canvassers voted to walk away from the recount whose tally would likely have led to Al Gore’s victory over George Bush in Florida and in the presidential election. One of its members, David Leahy, acknowledged the protests were a factor in his decision. The other two, perhaps fearful of their safety, declined all interviews. As the mob celebrated its victory, its Republican Party masterminds transferred their mobile home/base of operations to Broward County, where they employed the same tactics against that county’s canvassers on Friday.
Some conservative pundits have gone so far as to celebrate the triumph of mob rule over democracy and rule of law. Paul Gigot, a commentator for PBS’s “NewsHour” and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, praised what he termed the “bourgeois riot.” Gigot reporting from the scene, witnessed John Sweeney, a visiting GOP monitor, telling an aide, “Shut it down,” and thereby inspiring what he called the “semi-spontaneous combustion” that forced the counters to “cave in.”
A loyal conservative, Gigot was either unwilling to mention or unaware of the fact that the riot had been pre-arranged by Republican operatives nearby. Nevertheless, he got the sequence he observed right. “The Republicans marched on the counting room en masse, chanting ‘Three Blind Mice,’ and ‘Fraud, Fraud, Fraud’ … let it be known that 1,000 local Cuban-American Republicans — [a group to whom violence as an instrument of political intimidation is not exactly unknown]— were on the way.”
WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?
November 24, 2000
Sen. Joe Lieberman calls on what he calls GOP-led protesters in Florida to back down.
What’s amazing in the few reporters other that ABC’s Redeker, that have covered this explosive story is the lack of outrage at these tactics? Not until Joe Lieberman came out on Friday afternoon and denounced this dangerous development did the networks and most newspapers even notice the story. Most of the press reports seemed to believe that the Miami-Dade counters had simply changed their minds for no reason at all.
In fact, Wednesday’s Republican-sanctioned riot is merely one facet of a campaign that has been remarkably unabashed in its willingness overturn democratic practices and ignore the rule of law in pursuit of victory. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey has announced that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives reserves the right to overturn the entire election should it decide it does not like the result. “We in the House must be aware of one fact: In the end, when the final analysis is brought to the House, it is our duty to accept or reject that,” Armey told the Associated Press. ” He is joined in these anti-democratic threats by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who has indicted the Florida Supreme Court for allegedly ignoring “the most fundamental principles of our democracy,” promising, “This cannot stand.”
IRRESPONSIBLE THREATS
‘The Republicans marched on the counting room en masse, chanting ‘Three Blind Mice,’ and ‘Fraud, Fraud, Fraud’ … let it be known that 1,000 local Cuban-American Republicans- were on the way.’
— PAUL GIGOT
Wall Street Journal Meanwhile the Bush campaign at the very top has been encouragingly exactly these kinds of irresponsible threats. On the night of the Florida Supreme Court’s unfavorable (from its standpoint) decision, James Baker greeted reporters and intimated, “One should not now be surprised if the [Republican-dominated] Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.” As E.J. Dionne observed in The Washington Post, “Baker’s statement could mean anything from an ex post facto law overturning the court ruling to a legislative decision to ignore the vote counting altogether and unilaterally send a Bush slate to the Electoral College. The message: Nice little electoral system you have here. Too bad if anything happened to it.”
Vocal protesters swarm recount
STAY AND FIGHT
November 24, 2000
Democrats charge that the demonstrators in Broward County have been carefully organized by Republican operatives. NBC’s Kerry Sander reports.
While Al Gore won the popular vote nationwide and would easily have won the Florida vote were it not for the vagaries of the “butterfly ballot,” he is clearly fighting from a disadvantage in this odd electoral aftermath. His party and many of his supporters are of two minds as to whether they even want him to win the presidency. He is being portrayed by the Republican-leaning punditocracy as a sore loser who does not know when to quit. This despite the fact that Gore has abjured many of the avenues open to him through which he might fight the Republicans’ fire with fire, and has called on his opponent to make a joint public appearance and to tone down the rhetoric on both sides.
But Bush and Republicans want none of this. They can win, they have decided, because they alone are willing to do what’s necessary: This includes mob intimidation, public attacks on the judiciary, and, if it comes to this, a willingness to discard the people’s vote should it eventually be counted in their opponent’s favor.
What was an uninspired campaign for the presidency has become an absolutely critical fight for democracy. And it is for that reason rather than his own political prospects that Al Gore must ignore the calls from the pundits and the party hacks that he and Joe Lieberman surrender. History has finally given the hyper-cautious Gore a chance to become an authentic American hero. All he has to do to become one is take his own advice: Stay and Fight.
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Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and a regular contributor to MSNBC. |
