Saturday, October 23, 2004
Trust in the Process?
When do Democrats favor pre-emption? Apparently when it comes to challenging legitimate election results. Lawsuits are already being filed in the important battleground states. Why?
1. They actually believe their voters aren't smart enough to figure out where to vote, or to vote correctly, and they don't want to lose their votes. But then, they obviously aren't concerned about "counting all the votes", or they would be protesting the Democratic Pennsylvania governor's disgusting effort to exclude military ballots. So call me a bit skeptical.
2. In the event that George Bush wins, they want to create enough election chaos to claim that Bush was "again" elected illegimately and therefore doesn't have a mandate to purse his "dangerous right-wing" policies. I suspect this is the real impetus of their strategy. Why else would the plan be to declare intimidation before it actually happens? Do they care that they're harming the country and the democratic process in the meantime? Clearly not.
3. Winning at any cost? Could Democrats actually be trying to steal the election by creating so many loopholes and so much confusion that it becomes impossible to detect actual election fraud. I hope not, but that is a possibility, and Bill Hobbs catalog of alleged fraudulent behavior raises "serious questions".
Meanwhile, does it matter to these people that they are making a laughing-stock out of the Democratic process in the world's leading democracy? Are they doing irreparable harm to the idea that people can and should vote for their leaders?
The VodkaPundit opines:
To these guys [Democrats], winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election...Does all of this even bother any of Kerry's voters? We'll find out on November 2nd.
I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.
Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.
Democracy is the free market of political systems. And like any free market, it can't function without some basic level of trust. That trust comes, slowly, from hammering out rules even competitors can live with. That trust comes, with difficulty, by honoring those rules, even when your candidate doesn't win. That trust exists in relatively few places around the world.
That trust is hard to come by and it's easy to lose....
The system, the trust, is far more important than anything else. It's more important than the White House, or Congress, or Social Security, or jobs, or even the Terror War. Our Constitution is rigged to make it hard for any party to screw things up in the short time of four years. There's always another election around the corner, if you think the current crop of office-holders is screwing things up that's the beauty of our system.
But maybe there won't be another election, if you cause the people to lose faith that elections work.
Update
1. Which party is intimidating voters in Florida?
2. Democrats refuse to condemn violence in Oregon
3. George Will on fraud in Ohio
Do you think if the parties were reversed here, Dan Rather might actually find the time to report on this? I mean, he wouldn't even need faked evidence.
