From http://www.tomdelay.com/home/2006/12/21/tampa-san-francisco-bay-hurricane-warning.html
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“I wanted to go after entitlements. That’s where the real spending is and the first year of the last Congress, when I got to write an agenda, we had reconciliation as a process in there and we looked at every entitlement program, reformed every one of them, and saved 40 billion dollars. I wanted to do that every year and treat entitlements like you would appropriations and over time, get rid of entitlements as process. Entitlements should be outlawed in America. Every government program shouldn’t be on automatic pilot. It should be looked at and appropriated for every year.” — Tom DeLay (Interview with John Hawkins of Right Wing News)
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It seems that the Pelosi Democrats are nothing, if not, consistent when it comes to overplaying their hand and attempting to satisfy their ultra-liberal base. That is why it is worth warning my former Republican House colleagues and others who care about our electoral system that trouble may be afoot if the Democrats stay true to form.
You see, when the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives on January 4th, the new leadership will be forced to confront their leftwing base on a touchy political issue even before they set out to raise taxes, crush small business, and weaken our international standing. It is not well known, but the final approval of officially being granted a seat in the House rests not with the voters, but within the body itself. The entire House must vote to ‘seat’ each individual member on its first day of business regardless of the electoral outcome. Normally, the seating of the members is a pro forma ritual, but disputes can and have arisen in our recent history.
The controversy that could erupt next month involves the representation of the 13th District of Florida, the seat Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) vacated to run unsuccessfully for the Senate. The voters, albeit by a small 369 vote margin, chose Republican businessman Vern Buchanan to replace her. However, in typical sore loser form, the Democrat nominee, wealthy former bank president Christine Jennings, is activating the left-wing base, including the DNC’s ultra-liberal Chairman Howard Dean, to pressure the incoming leadership and the state courts to call for a new election. Dean is going so far as to tell the likely next Speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), that she should deny seating Buchanan, despite the fact that Buchanan has been officially certified the winner by the state’s chief election officer, the same status as the other 434 members-elect, including herself.
Jennings , for her part, is filing an official election challenge with the House Administration Committee, and she and leftwing advocacy groups such as People for the American Way and the ACLU have already launched a lawsuit in Florida, asking Leon County (Tallahassee) Circuit Judge William Gary to negate the November 7th results and order a new election. The suit was filed in Tallahasse, hundreds of miles from the 13th district, in hopes of getting a more liberal judge and jury pool instead of Sarasota County where the election actually occurred and the voting machines in question are located. The crux of the complaint is Jennings’ contention that 18,832 people who went to the polls did not vote in the congressional race, a number that the defeated candidate claims is too high and out of balance. Without a paper trail from the electronic machines to prove otherwise, she believes that many cast ballots were simply not recorded. With such a small margin between the two candidates, any such malfunction could certainly have altered the outcome of the voting.
At 237,831 voters, the Sarasota and Bradenton-based seat was the second highest turnout district among the state’s 25 congressional seats, even without the 18,000+ under votes. Adding in the additional votes would actually make the 13th’ s turnout abnormally high in relation to the rest of Florida (53.3% of registered voters versus 46.8% statewide). Furthermore, to get a better picture of the entire ‘under vote’ issue, one must look at the ballots cast statewide. To illustrate, 116,120 people who came to the polls did not vote in the Governor’s race, thus lending credence to the argument that all elections have voters who choose to skip particular contests. Though having over 18,000 voters not participate in the congressional race does seem high, it is not out of the question that the large number simply did not want to vote in the contest because both the September Republican primary and the Buchanan-Jennings contests were hard fought, very close, and highly contentious. Many Republicans, for example, with a negative impression of Buchanan, could simply have chosen not to vote rather than cast a ballot for him or the Democrat.
If Pelosi and the Democrats refuse to abide by the election results, however, their behavior would not be without precedent. I remember when I first came to Congress in January of 1985; the Democrats pulled a similar stunt, refusing to seat Republican Richard McIntyre, who had been certified by the Indiana Secretary of State as the winner after a closely contested election in Indiana’s 8th District. Instead, the House Democrats concocted an elaborate scheme to seat his Democrat opponent by appointing a special ‘House task force’ to conduct an election recount. No one was shocked when the recommendation came back that the Democrat should be seated.
One of the things I learned during my political career was how to count votes. In this election, Vern Buchanan got more votes than his opponent did and he and his 434 colleagues have duly authorized Certificates of Election to prove it. If the Pelosi Democrats refuse to seat Vern Buchanan it will reveal a heavy-handed, partisanship far worse than any of the imagined transgressions by the Republican Majority that I had the honor to lead. This vote just might show us the true nature of the greedy, power-hungry, unrelenting adversaries we face.
It would seem that lessons have been learned from the Chicago political machine. Forget about your rights people, because you flushed them down the commode when you voted Democrat.
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