Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

For those who dislike the GOP, watching Katherine Harris campaign for the Florida senate seat currently occpied by Democrat Bill Nelson has been an undiluted pleasure. She's tanking horribly, but has refused to step aside for another challenger even though polls have her losing to Nelson by around 30 points. She's recently taken to making statements like, "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin". Jonathan Chait at the The New Republic Online has a lengthy piece about the descending arc of her political career (HT: Weigel on Sullivan).

Of course, Katherine Harris was Secretary of State during the whole Florida 2000 recount debacle. I think the most interesting point Chait makes is that now that Republicans are doubting her sanity, doesn't that call into question their defense of her actions during 2000? Chait outlines some of her pro-Bush decisions in that episode and concludes:
Florida may be the last remaining taboo of the Bush presidency. Conservatives have questioned Bush's domestic record, his foreign policy, even (in the recent case of Scarborough) his intelligence. None have bothered to reinterpret Florida. But the bedrock assumption of the conservative interpretation of Florida is that Harris is a sober, competent, and upstanding public servant. If you assume that Harris is none of those things, then the whole denouement of 2000--and, by extension, the very legitimacy of Bush's presidency--takes on a strikingly different cast. What do you say, conservatives? Now that some of you are willing to contemplate that Bush has been a disappointment--or even a disaster--is it too much to consider the possibility that he never should have become president in the first place?