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 Stop Florida 'Re-voting' He Demands Oral Majority gets Widespread Publicity on Election 2000 Theft George W & The Washington Times Edgy about his Legitimacy |
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By Jack Nichols
"Panama City was not Bush's finest hour," Oral Majority chair Bob Kunst told GayToday because, he said, it was there "we exposed him and his weaknesses." Kunst laughed: "Panama City was George the Pretender's waterloo!" Referring specifically to USA Today's page one report on Tuesday, Kunst pointed to a lower-tiered headline which tells of a scornful scolding the appointed president gave to reporters. It read: "Bush: Media should stop Florida 're-voting' " Judy Keen, a USA Today reporter, said: "a dozen or so protesters carried signs saying 'Gore won' and 'Bush stole the election." But her lead paragraphs describe a would-be world leader clearly disturbed by direct challenges to his legitimacy. Her USA Today report said: "President Bush on Monday dismissed media recounting of Florida's contested election results as 're-voting' and said it is time to forget the controversy… "On the way to his first visit to Florida since taking office, Bush said continuing analysis of the state's ballots isn't recounting. 'That's all re-voting,' he said in an interview with USA Today aboard Air Force One. His tone was scornful as he added, 'I don't know how many times I have to win the recount.' Thus did Mr. Bush allow himself to be drawn into the middle of a highly-charged controversy about his governor-brother Jeb's pre-election promise to "deliver" of Florida into W's hands. The Sarasota Herald, published in a Republican stronghold, placed its Election 2000 worries story on page 4A and titled it: "Bush defends win at election battle site." Bob Kunst was elated. "He's on the defensive now," he noted, "we've struck at him where it hurts."
"He's smart," remarked Bob Kunst, sarcastically, "I was thinking of running against him myself. I'd like to think I'd win. There would hardly be any need for an opposition campaign slogan other than: 'I won't steal your vote.' It had been Oral Majority's 79th protest against the Bush brothers "heist" since November 7. His group's strategy, says Chairman Bob, "has been to never give this bum any sort of legitimacy for 'stealing our democracy'." According to Kunst, Bush's tax plan is starting to unravel. Stock market declines have introduced skepticism about the White House's ten imagined years of economic prosperity ahead, years Bush hopes might churn out enormous surpluses justifying his push for a massive tax cut. CNN's Wolf Blitzer emphasized that Bush, in spite of the stock market's current nose dive, says he won't back down from his now suspect plan to create citizen stock portfolios, using, in effect, a stock market in trouble to help fund the nation's social security programs. Wednesday's newspapers everywhere gave front page coverage to how Bush had reneged on a key environmental campaign promise he'd made, telling how he'd decided he'd no longer continue the struggle to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. According to the New York Times, this decision has been felt by both environmentalists and Democrats as a major betrayal.
If Bush is feeling testy about the legitimacy of his reign, his media cronies, The Washington Times, specifically, and various of the GOP's defender- pundits, are routinely twisting truth to draw attention away from the thorniest aspect of the presidency's theft. Interviewing Kunst, the right-wing Washington Times got his key point purposefully wrong. Its reporter stated Kunst wanted "a more liberal standard in hand recounting" when, in fact, that "liberal standard" had already been accepted with dimples and chads, as Kunst had clearly pointed out, by Florida's Katherine Harris in her acceptance of Broward County's recount. But the Washington Times reporters, ignoring this point, blatantly editorialized as follows: "Mr. Kunst said Mr. Gore would have won if the all-Democratic Palm Beach County Canvassing Board had adopted a more liberal standard in hand recounting the county's ballots. He cited a recent report by the Palm Beach Post, which tallied a portion of the ballots with the more liberal standard and concluded that Mr. Gore would have won. However, seven justices of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that hand recounts in selected Democratic counties were unconstitutional. The high court ruled that hand counting of ballots in some counties, but not others, violates the 14th Amendment's 'equal protection' guarantee. Kunst believes that The Washington Times' GOP strategists, by mis-stating his argument, demonstrate they remain eager to avoid the fact that it was actually a Republican, Ms. Harris, who'd "adopted a more liberal standard in hand re-counting,", a standard James Baker III and other handlers of the Bush presidency later ridiculed in their belabored fight to halt to a proper re-counting of Florida's ballots. "Bush and his loony-Moonie worshippers at the Washington Times have slipped up big time," exulted Kunst. "We've managed to get Bush to admit he's worried about Florida's election 2000 —he's feeling vulnerable for stealing it and he's actually telling us to forget. Secondly, we've caught the Washington Times distorting what I told them so as not to give the secret of Katherine Harris' accepted ballot standard away." BuckcuB, GayToday's political analyst, contributed the following commentary about what he calls the approaching "end of the media's honeymoon" with George W. Bush. He says: I have indeed noticed the shift in the network coverage of Shrub and of his opposition. More tellingly, I've been carefully monitoring the coverage on both the AP and Reuters newswires and some key words are beginning to appear that I've been looking for. The wire services purport to offer almost-completely objective coverage, but over the years I've noticed a change in the tone of coverage often signals a shift in journalistic opinion -- and the networks instantly follow suit, terrified of losing a single viewer to the print media. Here are a couple of examples. Last week, the services both reported that the Bush tax cut was "moving quickly" and "moving rapidly" through the House. But in coverage today of the tax cut, AP's report said the Senate would be taking up the tax cut which was "rushed" through the House. Reuter's described the Senate would be looking at a tax cut which "Republican stalwarts pushed to House approval with little opportunity for debate." That subtle editorializing tells me that the Bush press honeymoon is over. And I think that's part of the reason for the increased media attention to anti-Bush protests. The instant that one major news organ turns to a negative accent in coverage, that's it -- it's open season on the target. My favorite wire service coverage of the last two days was a story about Bush being protested by Democrats in Florida. The AP said Bush "scolded" the Democrats. Reuters said Bush "quickly dismissed" Democratic comments about the vote recount. Those words and phrases were not chosen by accident; NOTHING on the wires is chosen by accident. I think, as you say, that my latest suspicions have been confirmed. The news org's smell blood, and I would bet that within two weeks we're going to see more and more negative coverage of Bush, and positive coverage of his opposition. The networks all discreetly trashed Ms. LePore's new "Punch It Out!" poster on tonight's broadcasts, NBC even subtly suggesting that she was trying to place the blame for the butterfly-ballot debacle on the voting public. Delicious! The fight goes on. Only 54 days into his illegal occupation, Bush is losing the media. CNN's Spin Room had on Maxine Waters tonight, who openly said Bush was not her President, and "he isn't really anyone's President. He wasn't elected, he was selected." Even the snidely conservative Tucker Carlson mostly kept his mouth shut, and didn't respond to the charge. The worm is indeed turning. |
Activists shook up Mr. Bush during his recent stop in Panama City, Florida 
