Will future historians generally agree that Bush stole his first election?

Question

I don't see how 5 Republican Justices on the Supreme Court had any business appointing him to the presidency.

Mark : One thing the Civil War did determine was where sovereignty lay in the US. That alone may be the most important result.

Turbo W : No. The USSC appointed Bush Jr.
5 conservative Justices voted with their partisan idiology. We needed and honest recount.

Fast Eddie: That is just your spin on this. I don't see any evidence to support it. Bush and his thugs stole the 2000 election.

Mr Right: Smoke and mirrors.

Mark P: What the Constitution did not address was whether state's rights trumped the perrogative of the federal government. One could argue there was no consensus regarding Jeffersonian agriarian factions vs. Federalism. John C Calhoun would have not agreed with you.
Nor would Henry Clay.

Bumpus: Interesting point. I wonder if THIS national election was under too much scrutiny and was too big for the Republicans to rig. We are on to them this time.

Answer 1

Agreed. I believe that's what voters are for. I mean, think about it: if the Supreme Court was appointed by his daddy, who do you think they'd give (give being the key word) the presidency to? Even if it took longer, wouldn't it've been a better idea if the whole country just re-voted?

Answer 2

Nearly impossible to answer, because history is a dynamic discipline, the study of the past from the prism of the present. I think Woodward is taking a step towards framing the historical argument of the Bush Presidency, but again, the perception of this presidency will be based on the realities of the future. For example, many historians durring reconstruction argued that the Civil War was a watershed event. With the end of reconstruction and the expansion of Jim Crow, the dominant thinking was that the Civil War ended slavery, left a separated union with an institutionalised black underclass in the South, so changed little. After the Civil Rights movement, the Civil War was seen as important again. The war wasn't refought, the changing views resulted from the evolving "presents".
Response:
I think many would argue the Constitution established sovereignty in our Federalist system. I don't know that I would equate a strengthening of that Federalism with an establishment of sovereignty. At the end of the day, the constitution is directly sovereign and the people indirectly so. On this, I vote with Publius.

Answer 3

How sad that you have no clue about what actually happened.

The Supreme Court did NOT appoint Bush. The ruling, if you cared to actually inform yourself, was a stoppage of the appalling and illegular recounts that the Florida Supreme Court allowed.

You should also read the dissenting opinion of the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

The real issue was that the Florida Supreme Court changed the rules of the recount AFTER the election. This should trouble any person who believes in the rule of law. And it was not their place to create new recount rules - the Florida legislature had a law in place about recount rules. But the Florida Supreme Court was finally smacked down when they decided to allow different methods of recount, different rules of recount in different districts. This was unsupportable, and any person interested in a fair election should have been appalled.

But we know the Dems were only appalled they were stopped from stealing the election, with collusion from the Florida court.

Facts, sweetcheeks, facts.

Answer 4

2000 & 2004...wide spread voting complaints everywhere. 2006....hardly any complaints. Now why is that? Because Republicans failed to live up to their core beliefs and Americans are sick of it, so Democrats took the House and Senate and all of a sudden....no more voting problems! As long as the Democrats win, there will be no whining, there will be higher taxes, excessive government programs and, in time, Republicans will win it all back....then loose it again. It's the circle of life.

Besides, Bush didn't steal the election. But it makes you think why someone who is smart enough to invent the internet was not smart enough to rig an election....sorry Al.

Answer 5

No, Bush won every recount in Florida. Gore won none of them. The Supreme Court only prevented Gore from overturning the results.

Are you still stuck on 2000?

Answer 6

No, but I now know the difference between a hanging chad and a dimpled chad. We will always remember the videos of the puzzled looks of the people that recounted the votes as they made painstaking efforts to recount the votes.

Answer 7

"...needed and [sic] honest recount."?

Well, presumably you'd agree that Algae the Green Guy's folks would've been in favor of an honest recount, right? Wouldn't work, though, as the protocol favored by Algae's gang would've resulted in Algae's losing Florida. How do you like them apples? :-))

By the same token, if the Bushter's folks' protocol for a full recount had been followed he'd have lost. Funny how that stuff can work out, huh?!?

Answer 8

Yes

Answer 9

I thought the recounts all went to Bush.

Answer 10

I thought so too. Even if he did not steal it, what he and his party did was not any less.

But then, that first election is nothing compared to what he has done later on in Iraq.