Rig My Election, Please

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/07/21/notes072104.DTL & nl=fix

 

Rig My Election, Please

Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick

America into another BushCo victory?

- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

 

Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Bush supporters suddenly

donating piles of money to the Nader campaign in an

obvious attempt to steal votes from John Kerry? Pshaw.

Ptooey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere

distraction.

 

We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

 

This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is

the time of hysterical Orange Alerts and imminent al

Qaeda attacks coming from outta nowhere at any minute

and violating our children and kicking our puppies and

badly denting our Honda Accords. And, yes, this is the

time of election-year political tactics coming from

the increasingly anxious Right that will make Sun

Tzu's " Art of War " look like a cupcake cookbook.

 

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The

sensation that the Republican Party, though various

tentacles, will stop at absolutely nothing to maintain

power in the White House? It's true. It's the feeling

that, during the next few months, it's all about to

get very shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

 

How about another " imminent " terrorist threat? Pretty

much a given, really. Followed, of course, by another.

And then another. And then another and another until

every other day the newscast features a thick-necked,

panicky Tom Ridge saying yes, oh my God yes, we now

have definitive proof that terrorists are more or less

sort of maybe planning to strike the U.S. maybe very

soon and disrupt our shopping and screw with our TV

reception and blot out the sun. We just don't know,

you know, where, or when, or how, or what the hell to

do about it. P.S.: Vote Republican.

 

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has

always been a truly ugly business, and each party's

strategy to gain or regain power as election time

rolls around has always become increasingly low down

and nasty and mudslinging and soul cringing and

borderline illegal.

 

But this time it all feels, somehow, different.

Uglier. More sadistic.

 

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among

the Republican Party right now. It is no longer a

question of simply which party will run the show or

which platform will have the most influence on policy.

Rather, it's about a radically polarized worldview:

Are we going to be an aggressive macho globally

disrespected isolationist nation that has burned all

bridges and molested all foreign relationships and

mocked all global sympathy, or are we, as the GOP

wants you to believe, going to become some liberal

namby-pamby country where gays can marry each other

and sexually deviant women can have abortions every

day and everybody speaks French?

 

Because there is no middle ground. This is the GOP

message. You are either with us, or you are a

terrorist. You are either on the side of the

" patriotic, " pro-war party of WMD lies and homophobia

and violence toward the global community, or you're a

liberal hippie 'Nam protester like that jerknose

Kerry.

 

What else could they do to guarantee a November win?

What are they capable of, in the wake of 2000's stolen

election and the rigging of the Florida recounts and a

sneering, despoiled Supreme Court? Just about

anything, really.

 

How about a nice October Surprise of suddenly finding

Osama somewhere in a remote cave in Afghanistan as the

news media receives an " anonymous " delivery of a big

glossy photo of Dubya himself standing outside said

cave in a manly flight suit and lookin' all tough in

his cowboy boots and confused smirk as he waves an

American flag in one hand and holds Osama by a chain

in the other? What, too obvious?

 

Well, then, maybe something a bit more devious? How

about the thousands of electronic, touch-screen voting

machines now installed in the nation's polling places,

most every one manufactured by corporations run by

staunch Bush-supporting Republicans and many of which

don't allow for recounts or paper trails or any means

of double checking their completely programmable

results. An obvious recipe for election rigging? Is

that Katherine Harris, giggling through her Botox?

 

Look. This much is clear: It's not merely going to be

dirty politics as usual. It's not going to be

mudslinging and name calling and finger pointing and

policy wonking, childish little claims of " fuzzy math "

and aww-shucks dumb-guy cowboy shtick to appeal to the

lower intellects.

 

It is not going to merely be BushCo spending millions

of its enormous war chest, as it already has, to

launch incredibly vicious attack ads against Kerry and

Edwards that dare to question the veracity and

validity of Kerry's many Vietnam War medals or of

Edwards' political experience, although Bush himself

is the least-qualified president in U.S. history, one

who ducked military service and went AWOL and makes

all military service people wince in embarrassment.

 

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating.

Who, for example, isn't sighing in appalled disgust as

the Pentagon suddenly discovers that, oh my goodness,

Bush's own military-service records were

" accidentally " destroyed? How amazing! And would you

believe it, but the records in question just so

happened to be the exact months of just those exact

years that Bush was supposedly to have " served. " What

a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if

he even bothered to show up for duty at all! Gosh,

what a shame.

 

Another possibility: ditching nasty, wan little Dick

Cheney. Rumor has it the Angry Puppeteer could be

dumped from the ticket very soon, swapped for a less

slimy and more human candidate. Maybe a nice, crusty

war hero like John McCain? Or a strange, lonely,

friendless woman like Condi Rice? A bitter,

emasculated Colin Powell? Anything to galvanize the

ticket -- make it, you know, less ugly and old and

warmongering, more palatable and sassy and

Edwards-like. This is the new rule: If it might force

a victory, the GOP will consider it.

 

And, finally, if all else fails, well, why not just

postpone the whole damn election itself?

 

That's right, simply invent some (nonspecific,

unsubstantiated) terrorist threat of sufficient

hysteria so that BushCo simply has no choice but to

delay the vote. The result? Give you gullible, timid

voters more time to reconsider your choices and maybe

vote based on your fear instead of, you know, your

heart, or your soul, or your ethics, or your brain, or

your general sense of universal humanitarian progress.

 

Could it happen? Well, no. Most experts say such a

delay is impossible, ridiculous, flagrantly

antidemocratic. Doesn't matter. What matters is the

fact that the GOP had the gall to float the idea in

the first place. Along with about 1,000 other possible

anxious, must-win scenarios.

 

So, then, let this be a warning: Get ready. Expect the

unexpected. Watch the headlines, look to the skies,

dust off your stash of duct tape. Because Karl Rove

and the BushCo war hawks and the corporate cronies who

run the show aren't about to go down without a

screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

 

And if BushCo has proven anything in the past four

violent, budget-gutting, honor-molesting, nearly

unbearable years, it's that there ain't no

international law that can't be broken, no fear

synapse that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent

power tactic that can't be abused. Anything is

possible. You have been warned. God bless America.