A Post Of Two Women
The official wish of the Office of the Independent Blogger was for Sandra Day O'Conner to avoid resigning until next year and for Rehnquist to, too. The Office also holds two candidates for next year's election in its crosshairs as people that must be destroyed; one of them is Katherine Harris. (The other is Rick Santorum.)
Sandra Day O'Conner has resigned from the Supreme Court, and I have mixed feelings about it. I'm happy that this corrupt Justice, who stormed out of a party on Election Night in 2000 when Gore was announced the winner of Florida. Why did she storm out in fury? As her husband put it, "She was hoping to retire under a Republican President." God must have a great sense of humor because he gave her a chance to retire with Bush v. Gore and she took it, thus throwing her legacy to the wind and disgracing herself for the whole world to see. That aside, I'm worried about who will replace her, and am hoping for a Souter type rather than a Scalia. Wait and see.
Katherine Harris is the dirtiest woman that I have ever seen in politics. Her make-up habits rival a whore's and she's the most corrupt election official I've ever seen in all my life. George W. Bush owes his Presidency not just to the Supreme Court and Ralph Nader, but to Katherine Harris who did everything she could to stop the recount and who ultimately succeeded. Now she's running for the Senate, and how is she being repaid by the Bush White House? She isn't.
A little history: In 2002, Harris ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in a heavily Republican district and won. Two years later, she considered making a run for Bob Graham's Senate seat. But the White House wanted a different candidate in the race—Mel Martinez, then the secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In an effort to keep Harris out of the primary, Republicans approached her with a backroom deal, according to Florida media reports: Stay out of the 2004 race and the party will support your Senate run in 2006. Harris agreed, and Martinez ascended to the Senate.
Earlier this month, Harris announced, right on time, that she would indeed make a 2006 run for Florida's second Senate seat, now held by Democrat Bill Nelson. But the Republicans she counted on haven't lined up behind her—they've been actively looking for other potential candidates, among them retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks and Florida House Speaker Allan Bense. Karl Rove, White House senior policy adviser and deputy chief of staff, has gotten personally involved in recruiting Bense, according to Republicans quoted by the Orlando Sentinel. This week, Bense went to Washington to meet with Rove and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Elisabeth Dole. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has said that Bense would "be an awesome candidate if he decides to run; he's been a spectacular speaker." When asked about Harris, the governor has displayed a notable lack of enthusiasm, often talking as if she might not really be running.
Next year's election cycle is going to be interesting.
7 Comments:
Quote from Indie Castle:
"Katherine Harris is the dirtiest woman that I have ever seen in politics. Her make-up habits rival a whore's and she's the most corrupt election official I've ever seen in all my life."
posted by ThePoliticalPenguin @ 12:26 PM
Reply-
The most difficult thing to do as an independent voter is to maintain credibility. It is this commodity, after all, that keeps us above the loud and obscene critters on the floor of the political cesspool. While we may feel obliged to take a stand, we do not have to resort to, or abide this within our own ranks and act like those we oppose.
Personally, I do not care for the aforementioned Kathrine Harris nor would I be tempted to defend her except to say that if we allow ourselves to be reduced to the extremist behavior of those we dislike, we become them.
This is your blog and I will not attempt to tell you what should and should not be allowed. But I will say that I will not be aparty to slander... no matter how deserving or not, it may be.
To the Penguin... I suggest that your manner is representitive of your age and experience... or the lack thereof. I respect your desire to express yourself but find your demeanor less than worthy. Basically, clean up and grow up.
If this is a qualifier for me to move on... then so be it.
-Redoubt
I stand by what I said about Katherine Harris.
Unanimity isn't a word that's typically used to describe Indies. Independents come in all stripes and cover the ideological spectrum from end to end, from what I've seen. That a couple of Indies don't see eye to eye on something is hardly surprising to me.
That said... I agree with Redoubt that the quip about Katherine Harris' makeup is slanderous. Frankly, it not only doesn't add to Political Penguin's point... it arguably detracts from it precisely by virtue of being over the top.
The ancient Greek, Sophocles, summed it up this way: "When the argument is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
If you want to make a strong case, avoid slander at all costs. It can only undermine your case, and with it, your cause.
Redoubt:
I value your contribution to this blog very much. I would hate to see you move on and leave Indie Castle behind.
Penguin:
Like Redoubt, I wouldn't care to defend Ms. Harris, nor do I like her. On that point I think we're all in agreement.
In the future I'd appreciate it if you'd give some thought to how you tackle an issue when writing about it for this blog. Not out of any sense of political correctness which has to be conformed to. God knows I have little patience for political correctness! It's not about that. Rather, as the Sophocles quote illustrates, it's a matter of being pragmatic... assuming of course that you're interested in convincing others to share your point of view on O'Conner's retirement and whether Harris is fit to be on the court. And if that's not your interest, then what's the point of even bothering to write about it? See what I'm saying? Avoiding slander is a matter of being pragmatic.
I disagree that Bush owes his presidency to Nader.
Exiting polling in 2000 showed that a full 1/3 of the Nader vote came from self-identified right-of-center voters. They weren't going to vote for Gore in any case.
I highly doubt that all that many of the remaining 2/3 would have voted for Gore. I know I wouldn't have. And yes, that means that I voted for Nader in 2000. Not because I wanted him to be President. But, rather because I simply couldn't bring myself to vote for either Bush or Gore. My vote for Nader was a means of indicating my disgust with the choices.
I know that pro-Gore partisans love to blame Nader for Gore's inability to convince Nader voters to willingly vote for Gore. But, it's a really, really stupid argument to make.
The reality is that Nader could only vote for himself the one time. So, the real object of the Gore partisan's ire is obviously the voters. And why? Because we had the audacity to exercise our right to vote for whom we damn well pleased.
Well, first of all, Ralph Nader was one of three things that I cited as having contributed to Gore's "defeat".
I think that exit-polling-data was and is nonsense. But let's assume that it wasn't. Nader got Ninety thousand votes in Florida. If one third would've gone Bush otherwise then two-thirds would've gone Gore.
Regardless of the exit-polls, which, I reiterate, I don't put much stock in, Nader spent his whole campaign attacking Gore as not-liberal-enough and as a coward who didn't stand up for his beliefs while saying of Bush, "Of course he'd be bad. He'd be terrible! Now let's talk about Al Gore..."
Ralph Nader was and is a horrible excuse for a human being, as I see him. That's for another time and place.
I still stand by my quote about Harris but I concede that it wasn't proper language to use when making a case. It won't happen again.
I should have phrased that first sentence differently. I didn't quibble with your other two reasons because I think they have some validity.
If Gore had won Florida then I think that there wouldn't have been any Gore partisans complaining about 90k Floridians having voted for Nader. Which gets back to my point about Gore partisans really being angry at the voters.
And I don't think that right-of-center voters who went for Nader would have gone for Bush had Nader not been in the race. Nader was a protest vote, pure and simple.
Gore did win Florida but a combination of illegally cast military votes (with no postmarks) and bogus, outdated machines for the poor and black areas (contrasted with the pleasant, electronic machines for the suburbs) screwed him.
Katherine Harris doing everything she could to stop the recount screwed him.
The treasonous Supreme Court screwed him by stopping the recount and then ending it.
The state of Florida screwed him by pulling black voters who weren't felons off the rolls as ex-cons when they weren't.
Despite all this, Gore still managed to win the state and then had it snatched from him. Had Nader stuck to his promise not to campaign in the swing states (he spent the last week in Florida) Gore would've won comfortably and the evil wheels that turned after the election would've never spun and George Bush would be back in Texas telling his friends about the time he came this close to beating Al Gore.
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