msnbc.com
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.
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
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?
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.”
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.”
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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