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

To: Neocon who wrote (82897)	11/20/2000 6:08:08 PM
From: moby_dick	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

Neo - again, you are the voice of reason - I agree with your post. Unbelieveable though, that others here would defend Nixon's actions relative to Watergate - UNBELIEVABLE.

To: Neocon who wrote (82897)	11/20/2000 6:08:58 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Al Hunt, Mark Shields go berserk: Things got pretty heated on CNN’s special hour-long Capital Gang on Saturday night when Mark Shields and Al Hunt took umbrage at guest Bill Bennett’s contention that Al Gore’s operatives are "stealing" the election and are employing "thuggish tactics." Hunt pretended to criticize both sides equally, but his emotional reaction to Bennett’s conservative views betrayed which side his heart truly favors. Hunt, Executive Washington Editor of the Wall Street Journal, proposed near the beginning of the November 18 show: "I'll tell you this, if Al Gore wins the presidency because he emerges ahead in selective recounts in Florida or if George Bush wins it because his Florida co-chairman, the now infamous Mrs. Harris is able to determine who does and doesn't countdown there, it's going to be an illegitimate prize. And I think what the Florida Supreme Court may try to do is insist on some sort of statewide recount, which would give it a little more legitimacy." Time’s Margaret Carlson soon argued that "Al Gore should have insisted and somehow convinced the Bush campaign to recount all counties" and "the Bush campaign should have insisted and begged Katherine Harris to recuse herself, to have the co-chair of the Bush campaign in the position of trying to call who won the election, so brazenly hurt the Bush campaign and if they had certified the election today on the basis of her say so, the legitimacy would have been undercut from the outset of any Bush presidency." Moderator Mark Shields piped in: "Last time we saw Katherine Harris politically she was in New Hampshire campaigning for George W. Bush." That prompted Bill Bennett to contend: "You run for Secretary of State and she won the election. And Republicans and Democrats run. And if a Republican runs, she has the authority of the office; if a Democrat runs, he or she has the authority of the office. Her decision was so arbitrary, it was backed by a Democratic judge. Let me be frank, even franker than Bob. This may be the worse thing I've ever seen. I think you know I praise Democrats when I think they do the right thing, criticize Republicans when I think they do the wrong thing. Al Gore is trying to steal this election. "Wednesday morning, Bill Daley stood up and said the campaign goes on. And that's what is going on, a campaign. And it's got all the earmarks, not just of Al Gore but of Clinton-Gore -- personal assassination. You want to talk about Katherine Harris, Chip Reid on NBC reports that a high-ranking member of the Gore campaign said if Harris's certification goes ahead, our case against her will make Whitewater look like a picnic. "I know you guys don't like Bush, I know you don't want Republicans to win, but you have got to call these thug tactics. You can laugh about it. You can say it's illegitimate if George Bush becomes President, I think it's illegitimate if Al Gore becomes President because of what he has done. But if you don't call the kind the thuggish tactics that the Gore campaign is using now for what they are, the notion of objectivity in the media is gone." Shields shot back: "Bill, I just cannot disagree more strenuously. In the first place, Al Gore as we sit here leads in the nation, popular vote. Al Gore has more electoral votes than George W. Bush. There is no question that hand counting is more accurate than machine counting. There's no question about that." Bennett: "I'm sorry. Is that just dogmatic?" Shields lectured: "You can sit there from your Olympian perch and issue your moral thunderbolts, but the fact of the matter is you and I vote in the same precinct. Do you think the people there are corrupt? Is that what you think they are? Do you think they're corrupt?" Bennett: "Your arguments are ad hominum." Shields: "They're not ad hominum." Bennett: "To attack me being Olympian...The issue isn't the popular vote, Mark. Maybe it sounds Olympian to you. The issue is electoral votes. That's the Constitution. That's the way it works. It's not finished because they won't let them finish. George Bush won that election in Florida. He won it on the recount. Now we are going through the multiple hand counting in different districts and you know what the chaos that that has created, but don't insult me personally. Bennett’s points were too much for Hunt, who jumped in to denigrate Bennett: "Listen, Bill Bennett puts on his virtue hat whether there's not a political election and then he puts on his partisan hat when we have an election. Bill, you got your talking points from Austin on this." Bennett: "I don't." Hunt: "I mean, basically, for you to talk about Mark being ad hominum when you talk about Al Gore stealing, Al Gore’s a thug. I’m sorry. Wait Bob I'm going to finish." Bob Novak: "Let's not insult people." Bennett: "I can fend for myself." Hunt: "I'm going to basically say that both these guys have exhibited a win at any cost mindset. And there's no difference and to try to make moral distinctions here is really hypocritical." Bennett asked: "Let me ask you about that. Where is the character assassination on the part of the Bush campaign? Where is the character assassination?" Hunt: "Stealing the election -- thugs stealing the election. If that's not a character assassination I don't know what it is." Bennett: "Who has personally been attacked in the way Katherine Harris has been attacked?" The heated argument continued. Later, Carlson sarcastically remarked: "The character assassination that's going on towards the Democrats and from the Republicans is that these people sworn in to count the votes are considered to be stealing it by, you know, they're thugs, they're fraudulent, they're stacking the deck. There are more video cameras in that room than in a Las Vegas casino. You can't cheat." mrc.org