That's a part of it, but also Republicans in various states and in Congress have been pretty ruthless about stacking procedures to lock Democrats out entirely-- things like districting, debate and voting procedures in Congress, the control of election procedures and contracting aspects of them out to Republican-sympathetic private companies, etc. In the case of districting, Democrats have often been complicit since the creation of safe districts tends to favor incumbents regardless of party. But that also freezes the existing party breakdown in place.
These things are hard to talk about because they're wonky process fights. Some of it came to the fore in fall 2000, but Gore didn't really acquit himself in a manner to gain sympathy across the aisle, and much of the legal battle was over things that were kind of peripheral, such as recounts of votes that had irremediable problems in the first place. But eventually somebody is going to have the bright idea to lean on these issues as simple matters of fairness-- not about whether the 2000 election was on the level, but about how we go forward.
The authority of a nominally democratic government depends in part on the popular perception of legitimacy. People who write columns in the National Review might like to cackle about this stuff like Batman villains, but I believe that the vast majority of American conservatives are decent people who don't like the idea of imposing their will on the rest of the country through trickery.
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Date: 2003-12-10 12:20 am (UTC)These things are hard to talk about because they're wonky process fights. Some of it came to the fore in fall 2000, but Gore didn't really acquit himself in a manner to gain sympathy across the aisle, and much of the legal battle was over things that were kind of peripheral, such as recounts of votes that had irremediable problems in the first place. But eventually somebody is going to have the bright idea to lean on these issues as simple matters of fairness-- not about whether the 2000 election was on the level, but about how we go forward.
The authority of a nominally democratic government depends in part on the popular perception of legitimacy. People who write columns in the National Review might like to cackle about this stuff like Batman villains, but I believe that the vast majority of American conservatives are decent people who don't like the idea of imposing their will on the rest of the country through trickery.