What are we gonna do if some electors defect to Gore.

[Moonbeam]

The answer is to get some insurance:

The GOP's New Mexico Switcheroo
By Joshua Micah Marshall
Posted Thursday, Nov. 30, 2000, at 12:11 a.m. PT

Picking over presidential 'undervotes' and trying to divine voters' intention just ain't right! Or at least that's the argument Republicans and Bush family surrogates have been making for the last several weeks in Florida. Doing so can lead to endless recounts, changing the rules after the votes are cast, "mischief," and a number of other bad things.

But apparently this is a rule that only applies east of the Mississippi.

In New Mexico on Tuesday, Republican party officials prevailed upon the state Canvassing Board to have a judge, of all people (state District Judge David W. Bonem) consider whether undervotes in Roosevelt County should be reexamined and possibly included in the county's tally. Gore currently leads Bush by 483 votes in New Mexico and there are 570 undervotes in Roosevelt County, which voted for Bush 2-1. Mickey Barnett, a Republican national committeeman for New Mexico, said he found it "highly unusual" that 10% of the voters in the southeastern New Mexico county chose not to vote for president. That's of course the same argument Republicans ridicule when it's made in Florida by the Gore forces.

Was the Bush campaign itself behind this seemingly self-contradictory behavior? Officials in Austin, as well as New Mexico state party chair John Dendahl, deny that Bush's organization told the state GOP to get a judge to peek at the undervotes. But the Bush camp did arrange to have Mark Braden, a high-profile Republican election lawyer and former RNC general counsel, on hand in the state to advise Dendahl on how to plot legal strategy on post-election questions, including the Roosevelt County situation. So the state GOP isn't exactly flying solo in its quest to hunt up undervotes for George W. Bush. It is hard to believe the Bushies, if they wanted to, couldn't get the New Mexican Republicans to drop the "undervote" claim.

But hypocrisy is not the only issue raised by Republicans' undervote gambit, or even the most important. A bigger question is whether any party that cooked up a strategy as unstrategic as this one should be allowed to take over the nation's foreign policy. After all, there is no scenario in which New Mexico's five electoral votes will be necessary to get Bush over the magic 271-vote threshold. Even if Gore were to lose both New Mexico and Oregon (theoretically possible, but highly unlikely) the outcome of the race would still depend on Florida. There's been some speculation that Bush may want New Mexico's votes as insurance, in case an elector or two decides to flip. But that seems a highly hypothetical benefit. The one clear, certain consequence of playing the undervote card in New Mexico (aside from making the GOP appear brazenly hypocritical) is to lend credence to the Democratic argument that Republican lawyers and spinpersons are doing everything they can to stamp out in Florida.

Maybe the Democratic mole who sent the debate tape to Tom Downey is at it again. Only this time he's running George W.'s recount war room.

Or maybe the mole's Mark Braden?

Joshua Micah Marshall is the Washington Editor of The American Prospect.

 

[Dameon]

Not that you'd be biased in any way against republicans...

 

[veryape]

I'll clap furiously.

 

[Double Trouble]

... if any electors defect to Comrade Gore, they'd better move into the FBI witness protection program, because there will be about 50 million VERY angry people looking to string them up.....

 

[chess9]

Why would a Nazi want to defect to the Commies?

Republicans aren't hypocrites, they just need love. <sniff, sniff>

 

[Moonbeam]

tagej, Angry?, yes, hypocritical?, yes yes yes.

 

[Athanasius]

Moonbeam:

Of course there is hypocrisy in politics. Power corrupts, but it doesn't just corrupt one party. It just reveals that the tactics employed in Florida could possibly be very similar even if the roles were reversed.

Hypocrisy isn't simply a Republican phenomenon. Isn't it hypocritical for Democrats to demand undervotes in a state they officially lost but not demand them in a state they officially won? What happened to &quot;every legal vote counts?&quot;


&quot;Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save&quot; (Psalm 146:3)

All of us struggle to avoid hypocrisy.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I'll say it again: Steel cage deathmatch

 

[DABANSHEE]

Whatever happened to Michael Moore's travelling mosh-pit? That could decide the matter. They could take the travelling mosh-pit down to disney world at Orlando &amp; throw both Bush &amp; Gore into the mosh, who lasts longest wins the presidency. Who knows, they could mosh to 'Rage Against the Machine' doing a 'thrash grunge' Star Spangled Banner (Jimi Hendrix eat your heart out).

 

[Moonbeam]

Athanasius, I don't think it's up to the Deomcrats to petition to have uncounted votes counted in a state they officially won. That is the Republican's job. If they choose to do so in a state they want to reverse and try to prevent it in a state they won, they get to be the hypocrits. If the Democrats then try to deny that petition in the state they won while persuing it in a state they lost, then it will be their turn to be the hypocrits. I don't know how much hate radio you listen to, but my estimation of the current political scene is that the massive preponderence of put downs about being hypocritical and unethical, etc are comming from the Character Champions on the right. When they inflate their hot air balloons with hydrogen, somebody will inevitibely throw a match. I'm real tired of the morality prigs that see the beam on the left and not the mote in their eye or at least their parties eye. If the kind of response you have to the world were what I were bathed in, I wouldn't delight in pointing out this kind of stuff. It seems to me that what prevents vision is preconceived blindness. The unexamined life is not worth living and all that. While I know that I really need only to understand my own blindness, occassionally I point out that blindness is an equal opportunity kind of phenomenon.

I already know that most people on the right really do have character and believe that the right is where the best principals are to be found. I happen to think the same more generally on the left, but more specifically that truth with a T is a third way. I actually personally, at least in my best moments, feel goodnatured about all of this. If people like that tweak my nose, and it seems you have, I handle it better like that than from people full of palpable malice. If I notice the board filling up with tons of self-righteous liberals impuning everybody elses character I imput new coordinates and swing that mirror round.

 

[Harvey]

<<What are we gonna do if some electors defect to Gore.>>

I'll sit back and a lot.

 

[chess9]

Moonbeam:

This board will never fill up with liberals.

 

[Russ]

Ah, the last gasps and dying hopes of the left. Never have times been so joyful. &quot;Is that a penny, or a nickel on the ground?&quot; &quot;Who cares, grab it! It is all we have, and even it is not enough!&quot;

Russ, NCNE

 

[Athanasius]

Moonbeam

I am not trying to &quot;tweak your nose.&quot; I am only pointing out that politics breeds hypocrisy, and human nature seems insufficient (generally speaking) to rise above such things.

I am conservative in my values, but I actually don't listen to political radio shows at all because I find them arrogant. Actually, I deliberately do most of my reading from what I consider to be obviously liberal sources (such as the Washington Post) because, in the political arena where bias and twisted truth seem to excel, I am more comfortable in a scenario where the political bias is against my views than I am in a scenario where the political bias tells me what I want to hear. Of course, I freely admit that I am weird

I wholeheartedly agree that &quot;truth with a T&quot; is the preferred way.