Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

How sadly ironic it was for Karl Rove and others of the Republican high command to be proclaiming a dominance for the foreseeable future when an ominous losing streak was then occurring.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush and close ally Secretary of State Katherine Harris shamefully stole potential votes from African American and other minority voters by "scrubbing" the Florida state voters' list under the pretext of excluding felons from voting in the 2000 presidential election.

Despite this anti-democratic conduct involving stealing votes in reverse, limiting potential voters, courageous Florida Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis sought justice.  

When the Florida State Supreme Court ruled that a statewide recount should be held, Lewis applied state law predicated on "voter intent".  Lewis ruled that not only would under votes be counted, where intent had been made clear, but over votes as well.

An over vote problem of major proportions occurred in Duval County, the Jacksonville area, involving first time voters, mainly African Americans.  

Due to confusing language about voting for a preferred candidate on "each page" of the ballot where there was a continuation, this problem existed on such a pronounced level that the entire outcome of the close Florida race could have been altered based on Duval County alone.

Republicans knew that they could not tolerate an honest and honorable judge like Terry Lewis to conduct a recount according to state law and in concert with a ruling of Florida's highest judicial tribunal.  

The neocon Federalist Society stalwarts of the U.S. Supreme Court led by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas prostituted the law and contorted  constitutional reality by ruling in a 5-4 decision that candidate George W. Bush had his legal rights impaired by a recount that could have adversely impacted upon him.

It was nothing but fraudulent gibberish and they all knew it.  When Scalia had a chance to defend his position in an appearance at Oxford University's Speaker's Union he declined to do so, attempting to kill the discussion through clumsily applied humor.

Now we move on to the 2004 election.  Republican kingmakers knew that with Democrats pointing to the fact that Al Gore received more popular votes than Al Gore four years earlier, to pull off another theft it was important to "win" the popular vote.

When Bush was declared the "winner" he pointed to the "capital" he had secured with a 3-point edge of 51-48 percent in the popular vote.  

This alleged difference served to minimize pervasive and highly provable vote counting fraud and denial of equal access to Election Day voting facilities for African Americans in the greater Cleveland area.  The Ohio fraud was of such a magnitude as to make Florida democracy destroyers like Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris turn green with envy.

Many of us who had watched the 2004 race closely could see that the momentum had dramatically turned following the third and last presidential debate between Bush and his Democratic opponent Senator John Kerry.  

The naturally cocky Bush looked increasingly frightened while Democratic votes were sought by trotting out oddballs such as Zell Miller and Ed Koch, who would be lucky to influence voters in their immediate families.

Just as Congressman John Conyers, Bev Harris, and others documented the fraud in Ohio that robbed Kerry of an Electoral College majority, investigative journalist Robert Parry uncovered Republican vote fraud in Florida's I-4 voting corridor, covering the greater Orlando and Daytona Beach areas.

There was no forthcoming explanation on why the Bush vote surged from 2000 in a year where his totals were dropping or remaining the same within Florida.  

One weak as well as erroneous argument was raised in the Washington Post that Bush won Florida by a successful targeting of Christian Evangelicals.  As Parry and others refuted, that group held sway in Northern Florida and the vote in that area indicated no such gains from Christian Evangelicals or anywhere else.

As for that Bush "capital" based on a 3-point popular vote victory, that has also been thoroughly exposed for those willing to accept the truth.  

The book "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen" by Steven E. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss provides evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the later election was stolen as egregiously as was its predecessor four years earlier.  Kerry was as clearly defrauded by Republican democracy destroyers as had been Al Gore before him.

Steven Freeman, a highly respected professor at the University of Pennsylvania and leading authority in Social System Science, crunched the numbers and concluded that it is mathematically impossible, given current technology, for a 6-point differential between the 51-48 edge that exit polling provided for Kerry over Bush and the identical figures with a reversal of the candidates.

Freeman concluded that it was mathematically impossible, given current technology, to produce an error so large that in every instance, when battleground states were polled on Election Day, the differences between those figures and the announced official results in every state showed gains for Bush and losses for Kerry.

Another factor showed up as well, one that many were able to deduce before studies revealed it.  The factor inflating the Bush 6-point improvement between exit polling and final announced results was consistent upward movement in the incumbent's figures in southern stronghold states.

What could be simpler than padding the totals in states where Bush was the clear winner?  To do so in those states would not only be easier to accomplish than elsewhere in the nation.  Such an effort was less likely to be uncovered absent intensive investigation.

So Fleischer and your fellow Republican right cohorts, you have gall to be crying about election theft given the tawdry recent past of your own corruption-riddled party.