Will Bush Cancel The 2008
Election?by Harvey Wasserman &
Bob Fitrakis Published on
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by
CommonDreams.org It is time to
think about the
'unthinkable.'The Bush
Administration has both the
inclination and the power to
cancel the 2008 election.The
GOP strategy for another
electoral theft in 2008 has
taken
more

Will Bush Cancel The 2008
Election?by Harvey Wasserman &
Bob Fitrakis Published on
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by
CommonDreams.org It is time to
think about the
'unthinkable.'The Bush
Administration has both the
inclination and the power to
cancel the 2008 election.The
GOP strategy for another
electoral theft in 2008 has
taken clear shape, though we
must assume there is much more
we don't know.But we must also
assume that if it appears to
Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the
GOP will lose the 2008
election anyway (as it lost in
Ohio 2006) we cannot ignore
the possibility that they
would simply cancel the
election. Those who think this
crew will quietly walk away
from power are simply not
paying attention.The real
question is not how or when
they might do it. It's how,
realistically, we can stop
them.In Florida 2000, Team
Bush had a game plan involving
a handful of tactics. With Jeb
Bush in the governor's
mansion, the GOP used a
combination of
disenfranchisement,
intimidation, faulty ballots,
electronic voting fraud, a
rigged vote count and an
aborted recount, courtesy of
the US Supreme Court.A
compliant Democrat (Al Gore)
allowed the coup to be
completed.In Ohio 2004, the
arsenal of dirty tricks
exploded. Based in Columbus,
we have documented more than a
hundred different tactics used
to steal the 20 electoral
votes that gave Bush a second
term. More are still
surfacing. As a result of the
King-Lincoln-Bronzeville
federal lawsuit (in which we
are plaintiff and attorney) we
have now been informed that 56
of the 88 counties in Ohio
violated federal law by
destroying election records,
thus preventing a definitive
historical recount.As in 2000,
a compliant Democrat (John
Kerry) allowed the coup to
proceed.For 2008 we expect the
list of vote theft maneuvers
to escalate yet again. We are
already witnessing a
coordinated nationwide drive
to destroy voter registration
organizations and to
disenfranchise millions of
minority, poor and young
voters.This carefully
choreographed campaign is
complemented by the widespread
use of electronic voting
machines. As reported by the
Government Accountability
Office, Princeton University,
the Brennan Center, the
Carter-Baker Commission, US
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and
others, these machines can be
easily used to flip an
election. They were integral
to stealing both the 2000 and
2004 elections. Efforts to
make their source codes
transparent, or to require a
usable paper trail on a
federal level, have thus far
failed. A discriminatory Voter
ID requirement may also serve
as the gateway to a national
identification card.Overall,
the GOP will have at its
command even more weapons of
election theft in 2008 than it
did in Ohio 2004, which jumped
exponentially from Florida
2000. The Rovian GOP is
nothing if not tightly
organized to do this with
ruthless efficiency. Expect
everything that was used these
past two presidential
elections to surface again in
2008 in far more states, with
far more efficiency, and many
new dirty tricks added in.But
in Ohio 2006, the GOP learned
a hard lesson. Its candidate
for governor was J. Kenneth
Blackwell. The Secretary of
State was the essential
on-the-ground operative in the
theft of Ohio 2004.When he
announced for governor, many
Ohioans joked that 'Ken
Blackwell will never lose an
election where he counts the
votes.'But lose he
did....along with the GOP
candidates for Secretary of
State, Attorney-General and US
Senate.By our calculations,
despite massive grassroots
scrutiny, the Republicans
stole in excess of 6% of the
Ohio vote in 2006. But they
still lost.Why? Because they
were so massively unpopular
that even a 6% bump couldn't
save them. Outgoing Governor
Bob Taft, who pled guilty to
four misdemeanors while in
office, left town with a 7%
approval rating (that's not a
typo). Blackwell entered the
last week of the campaign down
30% in some polls.So while the
GOP still had control of the
electoral machinery here in
2006, the public tide against
them was simply too great to
hold back, even through the
advanced art and science of
modern Rovian election
theft.In traditional electoral
terms, that may also be the
case in 2008. Should things
proceed as they are now, it's
hard to imagine any Republican
candidate going into the
election within striking
distance. The potential
variations are many, but the
graffiti on the wall is
clear.What's also clear is
that this administration has a
deep, profound and
uncompromised contempt for
democracy, for the rule of
law, and for the US
Constitution. When George W.
Bush went on the record
(twice) as saying he has
nothing against dictatorship,
as long as he can be dictator,
it was a clear and present
policy statement.Who really
believes this crew will walk
quietly away from power? They
have the motivation, the money
and the method for doing away
with the electoral process
altogether. So why wouldn't
they?The groundwork for
dismissal of both the
legislative and judicial
branch has been carefully
laid. The litany is
well-known, but worth a very
partial listing:The
continuation of the drug war,
and the Patriot Act, Homeland
Security Act and other
dictatorial laws prompted by
the 9/11/2001 terror attacks,
have decimated the Bill of
Rights, and shredded the
traditional American right to
due process of law, freedom
from official surveillance,
arbitrary violence, and far
more.The current
Attorney-General, Alberto
Gonzales, has not backed away
from his announcement to
Congress that the Constitution
does not guarantee habeas
corpus. The administration
continues to act on the
assumption that it can arrest
anyone at any time and hold
them without notification or
trial for as long as it
wants.The establishment of the
Homeland Security Agency has
given it additional hardware
to decimate the basic human
rights of our citizenry. Under
the guise of dealing with the
'immigration problem,' large
concentration camps are under
construction around the US.The
administration has endorsed
and is exercising its 'right'
to employ torture, contrary to
the Eighth Amendment and to a
wide range of international
treaties, which Gonzales has
labeled 'quaint.'With more
than 200 'signing statements'
the administration acts on its
belief that the 'unitary
executive' trumps the power of
the legislative branch in any
instance it chooses. This
belief has been further
enforced with the
administration's use of a wide
range of precedent-setting
arguments to keep its
functionaries from testifying
before Congress.There is much
more. In all instances, the
109th Congressâ??and the
publicâ??have rolled over
without significant
resistance.Most crucial now
are Presidential Directive
#51, Executive Orders #13303,
#13315, #13350, #13364,
#13422, #13438, and more, by
which Bush has granted himself
an immense arsenal of powers
for which the term
'dictatorial' is a modest
understatement.The Founders
established our government
with checks and balances. But
executive orders have
accumulated important
precedent. The Emancipation
Proclamation by which Lincoln
declared an end to slavery in
the South, was issued under
the 'military necessity' of
adding blacks to the Union
Army, a step without which the
North might not have won the
Civil War. Franklin
Roosevelt's Executive Order
#8802 established the Fair
Employment Practices
Commission. Harry Truman's
Executive Order #9981
desegregated the military.Most
to the point, FDR's Executive
Order #9066 ordered the
forcible internment of 100,000
people of Japanese descent
into the now infamous
concentration camps of World
War II.There is also precedent
for a president overriding the
Supreme Court. In the 1830s
Chief Justice John Marshall
enshrined the right of the
Cherokee Nation to sovereignty
over its ancestral land in the
Appalachian Mountains. But
President Andrew Jackson
scorned the decision. Some
14,000 native Americans were
moved at gunpoint to Oklahoma.
More than 3,000 died along the
way.All this will be relevant
should Team Bush envision a
defeat in the 2008 election
and decide to call it off.
It's well established that
Richard Nixonâ??mentor to Karl
Rove and Dick
Cheneyâ??commissioned the
Huston Plan, which detailed
how to cancel the 1972
election.Today we must ask:
who would stop this
administration from taking
dictatorial power in the
instance of a 'national
emergency' such as a terror
attack at a nuclear power
plant or something
similar?Nothing in the
behavior of this Congress
indicates that it is capable
of significant resistance.
Impeachment seems beyond it.
Nor does it seem Congress
would actually remove Bush if
it did put him on trial.Short
of that, Bush clearly does not
view anything Congress might
do as a meaningful impediment.
After all, how many divisions
does the Congress command?The
Supreme Court, as currently
constituted, would almost
certainly rubber stamp a Bush
coup. If not, like Jackson, he
could ignore it as easily as
he would ignore Congress.What
does that leave? There is much
idle speculation now about
what the armed forces would
do. We also hear loose talk
about '90 million gun
owners.'From the public side,
the only conceivable
counter-force might be a
national strike or an
effective long-term campaign
of general non-cooperation.But
we can certainly assume the
mainstream media will give
lock-step support to whatever
the regime says and does. It's
also a given that those likely
to lead the resistance will
immediately land in those new
prisons being built by
Halliburton et. al.So how do
we cope with the harsh
realities of such a
Bush/Cheney/Rove dictatorial
coup?We may have about a year
to prepare. Every possible
scenario needs to be discussed
in excruciating detail.For
only one thing is certain:
denial will do nothing.HARVEY
WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES is at
www.solartopia.org, along with
SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED
EARTH, A.D. 2030. The FITRAKIS
FILES are at www.freepress.org
(where this article was
originally published), along
with HOW THE GOP STOLE
AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS
RIGGING 2008, which Bob and
Harvey co-wrote.

Category News & Politics

Tags Bush, 2008, Election