Bush Must Warn Gore There's A Price To Be Paid For Subverting Democracy

www.NewsMax.com

11-28-00

It's now clear that the Democratic Party establishment remains, at least for the moment, united behind Vice President Al Gore and his attempt to overturn the election results as certified by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris Sunday night.

It's also clear that if the Gore forces fail, they mean to thoroughly delegitimize any Bush presidency, through the media, in Congress, indeed by any means necessary.

President-elect Bush must immediately make clear that Democratic efforts to destabilize democracy pose as clear and present a danger to the nation's well-being as any foreign threat. And, more importantly, Bush must communicate the prospect that, as with any foreign enemy, anyone caught acting on such a threat will pay a severe and heavy price.

Quietly, behind the scenes, the president-elect should lay down an ultimatum to Team Gore. Unless the vice president and his supporters cease their political rebellion within the week, there will be consequences - heavy consequences effected by a newly empowered all-Republican government.

With the House, the Senate and finally the White House in GOP hands, Bush has the power to make life miserable for Democrats. He should make it clear that he means to do so unless challenges to his authority stop now.

CHINAGATE: Unless Gore concedes soon, a Bush Justice Department may decide to agressively pursue charges that the Clinton-Gore administration traded U.S. national security to China in exchange for campaign cash. And it may decide to do so with an eye toward prosecutions for treason.

Such an investigation needs to take place in any event, but Bush's inclination to be "a uniter, not a divider" would make it a toothless effort and with prosecutions unlikely.

CLINTON'S INDICTMENT: Unless the Gore forces give up their political jihad soon, say goodbye to any chance that President Bush will pardon Bill Clinton should he be indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in Monicagate.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICES: If the Gore forces continue to undermine democracy, any chance for bipartisanship in the selection of Supreme Court justices will be gone. Bush should dangle the prospect that his first nomination will be Robert Bork.

HUD: Unless Democrats recognize Bush as the president within days, his administration will considering rapidly defunding HUD. The Housing and Urban Development agency has become little more than a slush fund for Democratic constituenices, which will now have to pay the price for the Gore team's refusal to respect the Constitution.

JESSE JACKSON: The Bush administration has no reason to continue accommodating Jesse Jackson - perhaps the most divisive leader on the American scene today. The Bush IRS might consider a thorough review of the tax-exempt status of Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH based on findings of Illinois tax officials more than a decade ago. The Bush Justice Department may also begin probing Jackson's various shakedowns of American corporations over the last 20 years.

THE AFL-CIO: Without a Gore concession in the next week, the Bush Justice Department will not only begin to enforce the Beck decision, it may decide to seek retroactive penalities for years' worth of extorted union dues.

THE MAINSTREAM PRESS: If the press continues to treat Gore's continued quest for the White House as anything but the action of a disgruntled political malcontent, a Bush Justice Department may seek to establish media responsiblity for the post-election debacle through its early call of the state of Florida. The magnitude of media malfeasance on election night was so great that crippling penalties may be sought.

The president-elect should also make clear that the antitrust division of a Bush Justice department may decide to review the giant broadcast network conglomerates to see if they're operating in the public interest, much the way the Clinton administration went after Microsoft.

Harsh tactics? You bet. In fact, some of them are downright Clintonian. But don't forget, if Gore concedes soon, all will be forgiven and Bush can pursue the conciliatory tone that comes more naturally to him.

But unless Bush shows now that he is willing to play hardball against Clinton-Gore Democrats who mean to destroy his presidency before he even takes office, he might as well concede the election right now.

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2000

Answers

And in response, I shall post one of Paul Begala's rants (you know, he's the guy who regularly compares Republicans to Nazis, Huns, space aliens, and any other derogative that slips into his size 3 brain when the wind is right).

This would doubtless be PROOF that all Democrats "suck." Right?

NewsMax doesn't speak for all Republicans. NewsMax speaks for the far right wing of the Republican Party ...

Just as Paul Begala over at MSNBC doesn't speak for all Democrats.

(He certainly doesn't speak for ME.)

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2000

Stephen are you a democrat? If you are I would venture to guess that you are a 'southern democrat'.

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2000

I shall simply counter with facts. Quotes from the Post and the Journal, taken from an article at consortium.

Is this the sort of behaviour you approve of in your party? The fans have a right to know.

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Amid the escalating Republican rhetoric, a mob of about 150 pro-Bush demonstrators stormed the offices of the election canvassers in Dade County on Nov. 22. The election board was beginning its examination of 10,750 disputed ballots, which had not previously been counted.

With the mob pounding on the walls and roughing up Democrats in the vicinity, the canvassing board abruptly reversed its decision. The uncounted ballots were discarded, amid cheers from the Bush partisans.

The mob action in Dade County effectively assured Bush's election to the presidency. Despite the use of intimidation to influence a decision by election officials, Bush and his top aides remained publicly silent about these disruptive tactics.

The Washington Post reported today that "even as the Bush campaign and the Republicans portray themselves as above the fray," national Republicans actually had joined in and helped finance the raucous protests.

These GOP operatives spotted among the demonstrators included Tom Pyle, an aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Doug Heye, a spokesman for Rep. Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., the Post reported.

"Many of the out-of-state GOP demonstrators told local reporters that the Republican National Committee paid for their travel, room and board, putting a number of them up at a Sheraton in Fort Lauderdale," the article said.

The Wall Street Journal added more details, including the fact that Bush offered personal words of encouragement to the rioters in a conference call to a Bush campaign-sponsored celebration on the night of Thanksgiving Day, one day after the canvassing board assault.

"The night's highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, which included joking reference by both running mates to the incident in Miami, two [Republican] staffers in attendance say," according to the Journal. [Nov. 27, 2000]

The Journal also reported that the assault on the canvassing board was led by national Republican operatives "on all expense-paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign." After their success in Dade, the rioters moved on to Broward, where the protests remained unruly but failed to stop that count.

The Journal noted that "behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida," with DeLay's Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment.

About 200 Republican congressional staffers signed on, the Journal reported. They were put up at hotels, given $30 a day for food and "an invitation to an exclusive Thanksgiving Day party in Fort Lauderdale," the article said.

The Journal said there was no evidence of a similar Democratic strategy to fly in national party operatives. "This has allowed the Republicans to quickly gain the upper hand, protest-wise," the Journal said.

The Bush campaign also worked to conceal its hand. "Staffers who joined the effort say there has been an air of mystery to the operation. 'To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shots,' says one aide. Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events," the Journal reported.

After their victory in shutting down the Dade County recount, the national GOP operatives from the Bush campaign and Capitol Hill celebrated at a party at the Hyatt on Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale. The Journal reported that "entertainer Wayne Newton crooned the song 'Danke Schoen'," the German words for thank you very much.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

Paul,

Since I'm a registered Democrat, the Republicans aren't "my" party. :)

Ah, the famous "storming" incident, which was a tempest in a teacup. Gore's people have been trying to spin that as "intimidation," but the problem is, the members of the canvassing board in question said they didn't feel "intimidated," nor did they stop the recount because of the demonstration. They did so because they simply didn't have enough time to finish.

Wayne Boy can sing "Thank You" all he wants, but the folks in that county didn't WANT to do the recount to start with. They were pressured by the Gore team to do it. The court gave them a way out of doing it and the Republican demonstration may have been the straw that broke the horthie's back, but they did what they wanted to.

And of course, if we're going to talk about arranged demonstrations, let's remember that the Democrats perfected the technique many years ago. No less a redoubtable figure than the beloved Rush Limbaugh checked the folks at one demonstration in front of the White House during the Reagan administration, for example, and discovered that most of them were Rent-A-Mob types -- simply put, paid protesters.

Happens all the time.

For that matter, who's paying Jesse Jackson's bills? How many supporters did he bring with himself? And I guess Gephart and Co headed down there for the sunny weather? How many of those people down in Florida with "One Man, One Vote!" signs (on the Gore side) are actually Rent-A-Mob types?

The real reason why Gore's supporters are so annoyed is that Republicans aren't supposed to do things like this. That's THEIR territory and THEIR technique. It nonplusses them terribly. :)

THEY'RE the ones who hold newsconferences where you repeat the same 3rd-Grade mantra over and over (if you're Dick Gephart, over and over and OVER ...). How DARE the Republicans do THAT, too! ;)

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

I was answering the attack from Ben and nugget, not you.

And I don't much approve of Jesse Jackson, either. He is nearly as irrelevant as Nader.

Oh, well, now we can stop playing around with that old notion about Republicans being the party that respects the law. And eschews protests. And violence.

Chuckle. Wonder if they will still think this game was worth the candle, a few years down the road?

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

"...the folks in that county didn't WANT to do the recount to start with..."

Please tell me you're not seriously using this as an argument, Stephen. I don't "WANT" to do alot of things, but they have to be done, so I do them. This is just ridiculous.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

"newly empowered all-Republican government"

Really? Well, maybe technically speaking, but last time I looked the democrat had the lead in Oregon. Should she win, it would be 50/50, baby-unless of cours if Gore does win, in which case Lieberman would be out and more than likely replaced by a republican. But then so what, the executive branch, then, is still democratic.

There is nowhere near a large enough republican majority to assure straight partisanship can strangle the democrats.

Welcome to stalemate.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

Trish,

Immediately after the first machine recount, the canvassing board in question did a sample recount, decided that there wouldn't be enough difference to affect the outcome, and voted *AGAINST* doing a full hand recount. They then came under intense pressure from the Gore camp to proceed anyway.

That's not an argument, that's historical record. :)

So ... that's why I say that they didn't really "want" to do the recount all along. The bottom line is, they didn't see any need for the hand recount. Perhaps the demonstration provided a convenient excuse for them to do what they wanted to do all along; I don't know.

Again, speaking from more than passing knowledge of election rules: unless a court specifically orders them to recount (and that would be extraordinary in this case, given that the Fla Supremes had already fixed that Sunday deadline), they certainly have the authority to decide as they did.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

"Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events" Too funny. I can see it now...

Tomorrow at 8:00 meet outside the gates to discuss new strategy.

9:00 walk through the gates with posters in hand and shout "down with democracy".

11:00 tune all radios to Rush and turn up the volume so the board can't hear their own voices.

12:00 let's go have lunch with Wayne.

1:00 back to the recounts, begin to pound desks.

Oh such an unruly mob!

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20001128.shtml

The planned recount

WASHINGTON -- Old Republican hands Bob Dole and John Engler thought they had seen it all in politics, but that was before they watched votes being "counted" in south Florida. They were stunned ("radicalized, " said one GOP operative) as Bush campaign observers experiencing a Democratic recount. Audacious though the Gore tactics were, however, the results have fallen short of expectations. Since the morning after the election, Al Gore's managers have planned to elect a president by milking votes out of three heavily Democratic counties in Florida. Although former Sen. Dole and Michigan Gov. Engler were stunned by the transformation of voided ballots into votes for Gore, the count by late Saturday was not up to what Democrats had hoped.

The Republicans, after a very slow start following the election, have toughened up. George W. Bush's campaign forced a fierce struggle, haggling over ballots by the dozens rather than the hundreds. Instead of Gore clinching the presidency within three weeks of election day as envisioned, nothing is certain.

The dispatching of Dole, Engler and a squad of other Republican governors to south Florida illuminated the vote-counting procedures in Broward and Palm Beach counties. As a totem of the GOP and the party's 1996 presidential candidate, Dole can always attract national attention, and he did so when he said he saw "votes being cast, not counted."

Engler told me the same thing -- with elaboration. In Broward, he said, "not one disputed ballot did I see that could be counted in Michigan. Not one. You really have to see it to believe it." The surreal quality for Engler stemmed from Suzanne Gunzburger, the fervent Democrat on the three-member Broward canvassing board; she gave Gore each and every questionable ballot. The result was 583 votes picked in the county, eating up more than half of Bush's statewide lead.

Their behavior was no aberration but in fact was the extension of the carefully plotted Democratic recount strategy. It is no accident that Democrats always seem to win contested elections, such as Sen. Mary Landrieu's notorious Louisiana victory of 1996. They have the blueprint and the experts, and they were mobilized for Gore even before anybody knew the 2000 election would be a dead heat.

"The Gore campaign didn't just send people to Florida fast," Ryan Lizza writes in an excellent article in the Nov. 27 New Republic. "It sent the party's top recount experts." That included recount ace Chris Sautter, who was one of many experts on call election night. As long ago as 1984, Sautter ran the recount campaign that unseated an Indiana Republican Congressional candidate already certified by the secretary of state -- an outrageous power play that permanently poisoned the atmosphere of the House of Representatives.

Lizza reports that Sautter spent election night ready in Washington. He received the call at 4 a.m. Wednesday and was told to take the 7:30 a.m. flight to Tallahassee. This crafty operative has been hard at work in Florida ever since, training party workers and seeking voter complaints.

The Bush campaign was totally unprepared for this conflict, spreading anger and defeatism in GOP ranks. "It's like the Polish cavalry against the Nazi tanks," said one senior Republican last week. Belatedly, the Republicans mobilized. Republican pressure contributed to tougher voting standards in Palm Beach County. The decision by Miami-Dade County to halt its count may or may not have been influenced by a noisy though non-violent demonstration, but that activity did not hurt.

Nor did Chris Sautter's handbook take into consideration the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court might spoil the Democratic game, threatening to overrule the politicized and liberal Florida Supreme Court. Super-lawyer David Boies, representing the Gore campaign, did not imagine it either.

This is no mere Senate election in Louisiana or House race in Indiana, and the recounting that "radicalized" Dole and Engler will not suffice. Vice President Gore has signaled he will do whatever it takes to achieve office, contesting administrative and court decisions. George Mitchell, one of the best and certainly the most partisan Senate leader that I have seen in 43 years of Congress-watching, was sent to Florida last week to add his considerable bulk. Clearly, creative vote-counting won't be enough.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2000

50/50 in the Senate? Two cheers for gridlock.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

"Welcome to stalemate."

I love stalemate.

Stalemate is our friend.

Of course it's better when it's fresh,but it's great for breakfast the next day : )

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000