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

To: Snowman who wrote (104898)	12/7/2000 10:08:27 PM
From: amadeus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

no. to presume only one party is taking this to extremes is not accurate in any way. both parties are. gore made a legal request for hand counts within florida law, within allowed time frames. ethically it was not a correct position to take as it only selected counties favorable to gore, but it was a legal request and within his rights, and not gores responsibility for requesting recounts in bush's counties. it was a key strategic error however for bush not to request recounts of his own. democrats filed lawsuits challenging the ballot in palm beach county, and this was a key strategic mistake, which opened the door for multiple gop lawsuits to follow. the organized protest rallies were also an error. but from there, bush escalated it to extreme levels. his campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court, to declare hand recounts unconstitutional, one day after suggesting gore not to go to court, and it was thrown out quickly. all kinds of gop lawsuits were filed locally to obstruct hand count procedures before they could be completed, requiring canvas boards to appear in court, and stopping the counting process, in order to interfere with meeting the preliminary deadline. the acts were so partisan, combined with Harris effort to not use any discretion to allow recounts to be included the supreme court felt compelled to step in. then bush took it to the US supreme court, and republicans developed a strategy to take it to the legislature. all of this evolved as a means to obstruct the hand counts, and run out the clock. meanwhile a huge effort was promoted by the gop to demonize the election workers, canvasing boards, democratic judges, dimpled chads, & promote conspiracy theories. more strategic mistakes were made by the dems when they attempted to exclude absentee ballots without postmarks... not necessarily unethical as there certainly could have been many ballots caste after the election deadline, but a big strategic error as military ballots would have been excluded, and the gop created its successful 'war against the military' pr campaign. but this would have been long over, if bush would have allowed legal recounts to be completed. and bush likely would have lost. so the escalation to the level of constitutional crisis is more bush's responsibility than gore. unless gore would have just conceded. but without completed recounts, he was not willing. and with a change of 1400 votes on the second machine count, with a margin of 300 votes difference between them, I don't blame him. and i fully believe bush would have done the same thing. he has shown that he is willing to do anything to preserve his margin of victory in florida, especially if it would not stand up to a hand recount.