Norm and Lindsay
The GOP's dimming prospects of defeating Al Franken
Norm and Lindsay
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Strictly from a legal standpoint, the Republican party's desperate attempt to keep Al Franken out of the U.S. Senate, and thus deny the Democrats their 59th seat, appears to be virtually doomed. After being thrashed earlier this week in a Minnesota court ruling, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's victory odds, via the judicial route, are now roughly akin to the odds of Lindsay Lohan entering a nunnery.
At some point, the Republicans may have to face the music and admit that it's a waste of time to keep wasting money. But Coleman and the GOP aren't there yet; they will first need to hit bottom. Actually, their persistence is understandable; it's not as if the Republicans have much else going for them these days. (Indeed, today they are focused on the faux grassroots "tea party" "movement," bankrolled in part by corporate lobbyists, which purports to protest high government taxes...at a time when 95 percent of Americans are getting tax cuts). So, given the paucity of credible GOP projects, why not just keep waging a scorched-earth legal battle despite the ever-lengthening odds?
At this point - Minnesota has now gone more than 100 days without two senators - it's not a matter of whether Franken will become the 59th Democratic senator; rather, it's apperars to be only a matter of when. To appreciate why this is so, let's play out the judicial process, starting with the strongly-worded smackdown of the GOP that was handed down late Monday.
Coleman lost a statewide hand recount that was supervised by a bipartisan canvassing board. He then lost a seven-week trial that was supervised by a bipartisan three-judge panel. He basically claimed during the trial that the tallying of absentee ballots was unfair and erroneous; that Minnesota election officials violated the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause by using a variety of standards to accept and reject those absentee ballots. To buttress his case, he cited that famous 2000 case, Bush v. Gore. (You knew that one was coming.) But the three judges, in their Monday ruling, blew Coleman out of the water on all counts.
The judges wrote that Coleman had produced "no evidence of a systemic problem of (voter) disenfranchisement in the state's election system," that Coleman had failed to provide any "allegation or evidence of fraud or foul play." The judges had allowed the counting of several hundred more absentee ballots (after which Coleman was even further behind), but ruled that Coleman's attempt to introduce thousands of illegal absentee ballots would have violated state election law. And in conclusion, the three judges minced no words:
"The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008 election was conducted fairly, impartially, and accurately." They ruled that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast" and "is therefore entitled to receive the (state) certificate of election."
Prominent election-law experts have already suggested that Coleman pack it in. Richard Hasen, a Loyola Law School professor and election-law blogger, characterizes the Minnesota ruling's "findings of fact and conclusions of law" as "reasonable and conservative...the kind of opinion that is unlikely to be disturbed on appeal by either the Minnesota Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court."
But his assessment seems tame, when matched against the verdict of Guy-Uriel Charles, an election-law expert at the University of Minnesota Law School: "Unfortunately for Coleman, his (legal) prospects always depended upon a miracle...A good lawyer should know when further litigation is fruitless, and a good politician should abide by the same guiding principle."
Charles' argument was seconded yesterday by a Republican strategist who dished to a Capitol Hill newspaper: "(Coleman) is cooked. At this point, continuing to carry on only damages his brand for future bids for office.” And a new survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling, reports that 63 percent of Minnesotans (and 61 percent of swing-voting independents) want Coleman to give it up.
Coleman's prospects for a court victory appear fruitless in part because appeals courts rarely agree to hear election-law cases, much less overturn the lower court rulings. Appeals judges tend to overturn only when there are egregious constitutional issues (such as racism) or flagrant partisan biases. There were no such biases in the Franken-Coleman election dispute.
The three-judge panel, which ruled against Coleman unanimously, is comprised of one Democratic appointee, one Republican appointee, and one Independent appointee. The state canvassing board that supervised the statewide hand recount was comprised of two Republican appointees, one Democratic appointee, one Independent appointee, and one member who had been elected in a non-partisan election....in other words, in the fairness tradition of "Minnesota nice."
So, for starters, it's hard to imagine the Minnesota Supreme Court overturning the three-judge decision. Coleman is appealing anyway, but here's a further complication for him: Two of the Republican high court appointees will not be participating. They've recused themselves - because they were the two Republicans who helped supervise the statewide hand recount. Which Franken won.
So let's assume (wisely, in all probability) that the Minnesota Supremes, in the next month or so, deal Coleman yet another defeat. He's still threatening to take his case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping that the equal-protection argument from Bush v. Gore will help him prompt the federal Supremes to invalidate the state voting procedures.
But here's his problem: Ever since the highest court dragged George W. Bush across the finish line on Dec. 12, 2000, it has never once applied Bush v. Gore to any other case. That's because the Bush case dealt with very specific circumstances - varying standards that determine the validity of punch-card ballots - and, more importantly, that's because the judges themselves don't want to apply Bush v. Gore to any other case.
When ruling for Bush, they said so themselves: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances..."
You know how the Republicans always claim they want "strict constructionist" judges who will respect precedent and hew to the literal meaning of words? Well, the literal meaning of Bush v. Gore is that it can't be applied to any other cases:
Our. consideration. is. limited. to. the. present. circumstances.
Which is why the federal Supremes haven't applied Bush v. Gore to any other circumstances. It is Coleman who would be seeking a broad and liberal interpretation, in violation of alleged Republican principles, thus exposing the hypocrisy of his last-ditch mission. And even if he goes this route - or takes the even more extreme option of filing a whole new lawsuit in the lower federal courts - it's highly likely that the Minnesota Supreme Court will have already instructed the governor to sign Franken's victory certificate.
Bottom line: Coleman is a well-done sirloin awaiting the proverbial fork. If not for the financial/legal efforts of his party to delay the seemingly inevitable, he couldn't be more cooked.
Currently, Coleman has been on the short end of the stick in Minnesota since November. Despite what SMike thinks, good ol' Norm's popularity is dropping by the week. You wouldn't know that he actually got half the vote. Based on the trend of the polling, an ever increasing number Minnesotans who voted for him are getting P.O.'d that he's trying to ignore the rules of fair play. I can't imagine that Pawlenty is going to stand by him very long. How short-sighted are these guys to continue fighting for this seat after the bell has already rung, hurting your chances for other seats in the future?— yobill626- I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rush's new stand for "the poor, black, Muslim pirate teenagers". Big Hearted Benny says they were only trying to turn themselves in, you know. I almost never agree with him, but he has shown himself to me to be so shameless that he has morphed into a favorite of mine. You have to give the man his due, he's hilarious!— yobill626
- yobill626- It was unilateral action on the part of the Obama Administration. No consultation with the useless Europeans. No UN Consultation or toothless resolution. Certainly we dd not know that the pirates were going to harm the captain. And all we really did is create more piracy and more angry pirates. Perhaps we should have polled what the Pirate community thoughts were. Pirates are the lore of tales from the past. Imagine the harm we are doing to the lovable image of pirates with patches and puffy shirts.— ModerateMike
- ModerateMarge: I highly doubt the tea party movement is tractionless just because you say it is so. I think what you fail to understand is that many are fed up with government in general. We didn't agree with Bush's 500 billion dollar a year deficits and we certainly are outraged over the 1.5 trillion a year Obama deficits. The protesters were in the thousands in several cities across our nation. On another note students at Univ. of North Carolina threw bricks and disrupted a speech yesterday on in-state tuition by Rep. Tom Tancredo. Quite a difference between the flag waving Tea Party protests and the violent exremists protests the proffesors incite among their indoctrinated students. Wouldn't you say?— ModerateMike
- ModerateMike: they didn't "throw bricks". Some of the students that couldn't get in were apparently banging on a window and it broke. That caused the police to shut down the event and use pepper sparay to clear out the stidents. Perhaps the wackjob Tancredo didn't help the situation when, confronted w/ a 12' banner he didn't like, reached into the crown and tried to pull it away. Oh, that's right, HE'S the only one that has a right to free speech.— still_independent
- ModerateMike: the AP did initially report the brick being thrown when it was "breaking news", but later reports changed back to "students broke a window pane".— still_independent
The republicans lost at such a cost, their principles are intact. They scorch the earth and poison the well from which we drink our freedom. They loot the public treasury and call their pr flaks to accuse the democrats of a socilist coup. We pull back from empire while our economy is on fire and haliburton's commander in chief warns of weakening resolve before the soviet threat. In the 21st capital has gone global, no competition for the free world. Its all been liberated by air craft carriers and internet currency traders, its one big market, even the Red Chinese play in Macao with foreign casino investors. But in the homeland our borders are not secure, from drugs and the lure of America the home of the free and the brave. As republicans say no, no senate seat for Franken, no unemployment relief for the rank and those filing, no recovery for New Orleans, no more living wages for Detroit assembly line workers, no more taxes for the rich, no more future for the middle class, no more truth for talk show hosts, just more laffler curves and no taxes get the government of our axis of spending what we want we decide. The salaries were thin, so they let us borrow our savings against our homes, now the houses are gone with the equity, the pensions have shrunk to a pittance, and its taxe, bad taxes that must be attacked thank god the republicans have our back.- Fernado08- uhm. Don't the Democrats control virtually all segments of government? Did you not just raid the taxpaying public to the tune of 1.5 Trillion dollars to address every single pet project liberals have ever wanted? No one is standing in your way! You're in charge. Yet you still complain that all these issues haven't been solved yet you've controlled congress since 2006 and now have super-majorities in both houses. Perhaps you should look in the mirror to see the failure that liberalism really is.
- Still Independent- So the students didn't throw a brick but broke a window. Well in that case everthing was just great. Why is it that the left cannot wait patiently for the Q & A session? Imagine if conservative students did the same thing to Barney Frank that the leftists did to Tom Trancredo? Surely you are bright enough to see the difference. Right?
- Except when they’re propping up Bush/Cheney for 8 years, right? LOLOL!! I think you have FOX on the brain, as usual. Oh, and Yes – those MASSIVE “tea bagging” things – such a success! Everyone will be remember them long in to … yesterday. The Right should embarrassed and ashamed of such anti-Americanism! Those ‘events” did nothing but bolster American opinion on of the whacked-out right wing.— Franny_Hodgins
- "And furthermore why did Stuart Smalley struggle in a state that Obama won handily?" Swedes- once again you got it all wrong. The real question is why is an incumbent in a dogfight with Stuart Smalley? They have a Republican Governor and one of the most outspoken conservative members of Congress- Michele (armed and dangerous) Bachmann. And please enough already with Acorn. A couple of silly volunteers write Mickey Mouse on a form and you and Hannity have a freak out. Don't you think that if they wanted to commit real fraud they would have written different names? Just the fact you guys keep bringing this up has only weakened your cause. Not to mention, Coleman's tantrums these past five months doesn't make me think he would easily "drub" Franken in a do-over.— pagoda
- Um, some of my post got cut off, guys: Smike – I know that you strive to get something, anything, just 1 thing right every now and then, but as your abysmal track record shows, once again you’re a total failure on that front. TIME is a state-run media – LOL! Except when they’re propping up Bush/Cheney for 8 years, right? LOLOL!! I think you have FOX on the brain, as usual. Oh, and Yes – those MASSIVE “tea bagging” things – such a success! Everyone will be remember them long in to … yesterday. The Right should embarrassed and ashamed of such anti-Americanism! Those ‘events” did nothing but bolster American opinion on of the whacked-out right wing.— Franny_Hodgins
- swedesboromike: did what? held up banners and chanted? I'd be fine with it. The 1st ammendment doesn't extend only to the speaker. Should property ever be damaged, unintentional or otherwise? of course not. And why are they leftists? because they disagree with a race-baiting, fear mongering wack-job like Tom "cukoo" Tancredo?— still_independent
- Mike - Then where the hell were you and those who think like you do when Bush was running up those deficits ???? And I find it comical that you repeat those deficit figures NOT taking into account Obama's putting alot more of gov't expenditures ON THE BOOKS where they should have been all along ! It goes back to your inability or refusal to answer these questions 1) Are you for Social Security ? 2) Repudiating national debt ? 3) Continuing Bush boondogles in Military spending ? Once these questions are answered do the math. Bush took the Clinton prosperity and wasted it. We are in hock to the Chinese - not good for our national security !!!— ModerateMarge
- Mike - Then where the hell were you and those who think like you do when Bush was running up those deficits ???? And I find it comical that you repeat those deficit figures NOT taking into account Obama's putting alot more of gov't expenditures ON THE BOOKS where they should have been all along ! It goes back to your inability or refusal to answer these questions 1) Are you for Social Security ? 2) Repudiating national debt ? 3) Continuing Bush boondogles in Military spending ? Once these questions are answered do the math. Bush took the Clinton prosperity and wasted it. We are in hock to the Chinese - not good for our national security !!!— ModerateMarge
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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