Salon: How Jeb Bush cheated America & helped deliver the presidency to W [View all]

[seafan]

Thank you immensely, Heather Digby Parton, for this EXCELLENT review, on the anniversary of the hostile takeover 15 years ago today.

“Your little brother is not the ultimate authority”: How Jeb Bush cheated America & helped deliver the presidency to W, Nov 3, 2015

Fifteen years ago, America voted for Al Gore. Unfortunately for Gore, he didn't have a governor for a brother



(Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)

When some of us hear Jeb Bush’s new slogan, “Jeb can fix it,” we don’t think of a mechanic getting under the hood and fixing the nation’s problems. We don’t even think of Jimmy Savile, the notorious British pedophile, whose show was called “Jim’ll fix it,” although some people sure will. No, we think about Election 2000 and the Florida recount, where Jeb proved that his slogan isn’t all hot air. Whatever else he did as Governor of Florida, when it came to that election, Jeb fixed it.

Anyone old enough to remember that election night, which was 15 years ago today, will remember that the outcome of the electoral college depended on that one state. And what came next is exactly what anyone would have predicted would happen when an election is so close it triggers a recount in a state in which the levers of power and the electoral machinery are run by one of the candidates’ brothers. That candidate was the one who became president.

The road George W. and Jeb Bush took to get there was complicated and difficult, and in the end had to be decided by a couple of Supreme Court justices who happened to have been appointed by the Bush brothers’ dad when he was president. (Who says that dynasties have no clout in American politics?) But Jeb proved himself to be particularly adept at getting the job done without getting his hands dirty.

.....

The media played an interesting part as well. The networks first called the election for Gore based on exit polls which later turned out to correctly predict for whom the people actually voted that day. Fox News, with one of its earliest political coups, was the first to call it for Bush. A consultant by the name of John Ellis, who later admitted to being on the phone with Jeb and George W. Bush throughout the evening, is the fellow who made that initial call for Fox. If his name sounds familiar it’s because John Ellis, is also Jeb Bush’s name; “Jeb” stands for John Ellis Bush. Ellis is George W. and Jeb’s first cousin.

The Bush campaign knew that once they had established their “lead” they needed to keep it. The key was to be able to declare victory and then portray the Gore campaign as being sore losers who refused to accept defeat. On election night, they almost succeeded in getting Gore to capitulate without a fight. He was on the way to make his concession speech when his team told him to hold up, that the margin was ridiculously tight and that a recount would be mandated by state law. The phone call that happened next was a very telling exchange:

.....

Jeb may not have been the ultimate authority but he had plenty of influence on the state’s electoral machinery, particularly the Secretary of State Katherine Harris who was in charge of the recount and who also happened to be one of George W. Bush’s campaign co-chairs. According to Jeffrey Toobin’s book “Too Close to Call” an angry Jeb awakened Harris at three in the morning to chastise her for allowing the assistant director of elections to go on TV and discuss Florida election laws, which required recounts and a standard of determining the intent of the voter. Jeb had this foolish bureaucrat yanked from the air immediately and he assigned her a political advisor by the name of Mac Stipanovich, a close political associate and master of Florida politics and electoral machinery.

.....

Village Voice:

Baker was practically announcing that Brother Jeb had put the legislature in play. With Feeney’s majority approving the Bush slate the very day that the U.S. Supreme Court weighed its final decision, the First Family of Texas and Florida was making it clear that it was even prepared to circumvent a 7 to 2 Republican court if it didn’t like the ultimate decision.

Digby again:

That may have been the single most important move by Jeb Bush during the whole recount period. By getting the legislature to provide the final backstop the media began the drumbeat that there was little point in further pursuing the recount. With the Florida Republicans prepared to use the arcane rules of the legislature to install George W. Bush no matter what the vote tally ultimately showed, the press now assumed Bush would be president. This was when they began to pat America on the back for being so civilized in the way it handles such disputes (there were no tanks in the streets!) and to tell Democrats to “get over it.”

More from my own research here. And here.


Jeb should be hammered with this at each and every opportunity that comes.

Just like Daddy, always keeping his own hands clean, Jeb Bush is a long-time fixer.


He is one of the leading bad actors responsible for the ongoing catastrophe draining the life out of our country today.