<<A comment - has anybody met/seen/talked with/heard or heard of a
single Republican who doesn't stand solidly on Bush's side in this
dispute?
Why is it that the Democrats are wishy-washy on Gore, while the
Republicans are hard-core for Bush?
Perhaps they have a clearer vision.
Barry>>
Since you asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, so I can give
you my opinion. I actually was sympathetic to Gore for the first day or
two. The fact that he won the national popular vote, and was only behind by
several hundred votes in a state in which Nader received 92,000 votes, were
hard to ignore. But then he lost me. Instead of immediately requesting a
state-wide manual recount, he asked for a manual recount in four Democratic
counties, and then started suing the Democratic canvassing boards if they
either refused to do a manual recount, or refused to count the dimple
ballots. He then turns Kathryn Harris into Ken Starr, simply because she
was doing her job. (I am a lawyer and have followed this closely. She may
be a partisan, but she did nothing wrong and did not deserve the treatment
she received.) In other words, instead of playing fair, Gore played power
politics. And if he was going to play power politics, then all was fair on
the Bush side.
I do not know what Bush could have done differently. He was ahead -- was he
supposed to voluntarily change the rules to make victory more difficult? If
Gore had requested a statewide manual recount on November 9, he would have
had the moral upper hand, and I would have supported him. But if he did
that, he probably would have lost, so he chose the "count every Democratic
vote" strategy. He deserved to lose after that.
And that's how this bourgeois Republican thinks.
David Shemano
