And other Republican Hypocrisy.

The long term plan is to keep Franken out of the Senate forever. Not likely to work. The short term plan is to “taint” Franken, so that morons like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan (MSNBC) and Ann Coulter can constantly refer to “Franken” and “Tainted” in the same sentence again and again and again.

Which will not be a big problem, really, because this is an old and tired strategy that no on cares about any more. But it is their strategy.

Now, about the law suit: We have the Republicans hitting all the same exact issues that have been hit before. Of these issues, one was never really closely looked at, so the court may need to look more closely. The others have already been tossed out by prior decisions (by the same court!). Although the Coleman lawyers can technically, legally do this because an “election contest” (the technical term for this ‘suit’) is not an appeal, it is normally not the case that if a court says “no” that you can either a) ask another court at the same level to say yes or b) ask the same court again and again. (There is no new evidence here.) The court will quickly toss out all but one of the material challenges.

What the law suit does do, however, is to place coleman in the clear underdog spot, and this is the first time he has been clearly in that spot for the entire race. Then, from this powerful position as victim, the law suit allows the injection of all of the terms and phrases linked to the Tainting of Franken. This way, there will be a nice, rich rhetorical menu from which to chose over the next few years as Coleman repositions himself and the Republicans work towards retaking he Senate.

Now, I’d like to show you a video (Ana the Blogless brought this to my attention). This is a CNN Video that has the phrase “Not so Fast Franken” across the bottom. and it is a sham interview of Texas Senator John Cornyn, “Chairman” of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Why is this a sham interview? Because the interview is about the Republican’s plan to interfere with seating Franken earlier this week (being discussed in the interview as a future event). The thing is, this is not even a tiny issue. Franken was not going to try to be seated, nor was Coleman or anyone else, because of the automatic delay in issuing of the election certificate for a seven day review period, and everyone, including Senator Cornyn, knows this. In other words, this was a totally senseless premise to a news story, and a totally senseless set of statements by Cornyn. So why was this interview happening at all? For no reason whatsoever? Not likely. The video was part of the development of the Franken as Tainted rhetoric.

In this video, Cornyn demonstrates the taint-language approach, and he also demonstrates another bit of Republican shenanigans. I would like to orient you to both of these before you watch.

Regarding the taint-talk, Cornyn refers (although he does a poor job of it) to most of the phrases that are being injected into the conversation by the Coleman campaign (Double counted ballots; Irregularities; Every vote counts; and so on). We are going to see this language regularized, adapted, and repeated as it is spread through talking point memos. We’re going to see the information misused and gotten wrong by gnomes like Cornyn who have gotten the Taint Franken Talking Points Memo, but do not really understand all of it because they have not been paying attention to the details. In other words, we are going to see yet another example of senseless conversation in Washington and the press surrounding yet another non issue.

The lack of understanding the situation by Cornyn may be related to the other thing I wanted to point out about this video. This is what appears to be a logical flaw or even an out and out hypocrisy demonstrated in what Cornyn says. To get this, you have to know that the Democrats are generally against seating Illinois appointee Burris because they think he is not re-electable, and would prefer a stronger candidate in that position. The Republicans want him seated for the same reasons. The logic behind the Democratic Party action is this: According to Senate Rule Two, for a senator to be seated, there must be a proper election certificate. In the case of Burris, there is no proper election certificate, because both the governor and the state’s Secretary of State must sign the certificate. So the Democrats say they won’t seat him on this basis.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are making the argument that the US Constitution really just says that there must be “executive” action or intent on the part of the state. You only need the governor’s signature on the certificate. This makes what the Democrats are doing, according to the Republicans, unconstitutional. Got that? Keep this in mind as you watch the video. It will make you laugh.

Regarding this argument, then, we have the following (paraphrased from various Republican sources including the video you are about to watch) being said:

“Minnesota Law says you need an election certificate with a signature from the governor and the secretary of state. Therefore you can’t seat Franken”

And finally, we hear from Cornyn, regarding the Democratic strategy: “You can’t have it both ways.”

Um. Right.

And now the “you can’t have it both ways” show:

… regarding the likely response by Coleman following the certification of the Minnesota Senatorial Race tomorrow (Monday) by the Canvassing Board.

No matter who wins, either party can lodge a legal challenge, potentially pushing the election results out quite a period of time from now. In 1969, Minnesota was unable to certify their Senator until well in to March.

But this isn’t the 1960s, and Norm Coleman surely knows that.

Just because he challenges the election, which is something he’s well poised himself to do, it doesn’t mean the outcome will change. If he fights tooth and nail to the death, and he loses, it will surely spell the end of his political career…

Read the rest by Brian White at Glossy News. Oh, google it. The site is showing signs of not being well behaved so I’m not linking to it.

And the worst case scenario is that this lead could drop by far less then necessary to turn the race around.

Everyone assumes that the loser, in this case Coleman, will file a law suit. It would fit with how the game has been played so far. But what would such a law suit do? It is not the case that there is some 300 votes laying around that Coleman could have if he won a suit. The best he could probably do, and this is very unlikely, is to get about 130 votes that may or may not have been double counted thrown out. Not enough.

The other thing Coleman could do with a law suit is to end his political career in Minnesota. It is now Obvious that Franken has won this race. If Coleman files a law suit, which he would have to do within seven days of the certification of the election (expected Monday), and the suit was heard by the State Supreme court (which it may well not be), then there would be a period of several (three or four) weeks during which time Coleman would be increasingly seen as not really caring about democracy. This, of course, would be happening as the other shoe drops on Coleman’s political career.
Continue reading Franken lead rises to over 200 →

I live in Minnesota, and our team is the Vikings. So I know something about losing, and from this perspective, I can explain to you what Norm Coleman is doing.
Continue reading The Next Step in The Franken-Coleman Senate Race →