-Caveat Lector-
[Here's another sick twist on things. --MS]
London Times-November 11, 2000
Even liberals are shocked by the Gore camps tactics
IN THE aftermath of Tuesday�s voting Al Gore has followed the
kind of scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners strategy adopted by
President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal in attempting to
sway public opinion in his favour.
�The campaign continues,� his chief aide, William Daley, said
after Mr Gore revoked his concession to George W. Bush on
election night.
Daley wasn�t kidding. Election campaigns in this country are
increasingly conducted without reference to even minimal decency,
but the name-calling usually ends on election day because, once
the votes have been cast, it serves no useful purpose.
That tradition of civility would have been especially welcome at
this unparalleled moment, with the uncertainty about the
election�s outcome threatening the stability of the somewhat
shaky financial markets and surely tempting anti-American forces
around the world, who might see the present crisis as an
opportunity to test this nation�s resolve and spirit with terror
bombs.
Instead, the continuing Gore campaign is fomenting discord based
almost entirely on a ballot in one of Florida�s 67 counties that
had a confusing design. The campaign�s claim is that 19,000
voters were �disenfranchised� because they punched two holes in
the presidential ballot. It dispatched the rabble-rouser Jesse
Jackson to South Florida to conduct a street demonstration that
he shamefully and shamelessly likened to the civil rights protest
in the city of Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
Disenfranchisement is a very serious charge � it suggests a
purposeful effort to deny people the right to vote � but in the
presidential election of 1996, in the same county and with many
fewer voters showing up, about 15,000 ballots were invalidated
for the same reason. Since the county in question is Democratic
in composition and the margin separating Mr Gore and Mr Bush in
the state is well under 1,000, the Gore campaign baldly advanced
the argument, before the recount was completed, that their man is
the true victor in Florida and therefore the rightful
President-elect.
�If the will of the people is to prevail,� Mr Daley said, �Al
Gore should be awarded a victory in Florida and be our next
President.�
It was shocking to see Mr Daley arrogate to himself the role of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau�s �legislator�, determining the will of the
people through the workings of his own superior intelligence.
While it would be forgivable in the midst of an election
campaign, it is inexcusable at a time of national crisis.
This was astounding not only to conservatives, but to liberals as
well, such as the leader-writers of The Washington Post, who
wrote: �It�s a poisonous thing to say in these extraordinary and
unsettling circumstances, and Mr Gore makes a huge mistake if he
fails promptly to disown it.�
Mr Gore disowned nothing, and if he did so it would be a
disingenuous act. The Vice-President surely approved Mr Daley�s
statement.
At this moment, above all moments, Americans need to be reminded
by their leaders that this is a nation governed not by �the will
of the people�, but by the rule of law, which derives its
legitimacy from the democratic electoral process.
Laws govern elections. Some people may indeed have been so stupid
that they cast their ballots incorrectly (I was once equally
stupid, casting a vote absent-mindedly for Walter Mondale in 1984
when I wanted to vote for Ronald Reagan), but their inability to
read a ballot correctly does not give them the presumptive right
to have a �do-over�.
It is, after all, impossible to know in a state where six million
voted how many Republican idiots elsewhere in Florida spoilt
their ballots and had them invalidated.
Ballots are not and should not be subjected to Talmudic
interpretation unless there is evidence of deliberate and
conscious fraud or tampering. If a precedent is set in this
matter, the process by which Americans cast their vote will begin
to deconstruct itself.
That�s what Al Gore has done at a time of crisis. He is trying to
get Americans to call into question the rule of law for his own
personal gain. After this fiasco, there�s every reason to believe
he would make an appalling President. The author is a columnist
for the New York Post.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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