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Jackson Stirs Controversy to Advance His Agenda

By Paul M. Weyrich November 19, 2001

Oh, the Reverend Jesse Jackson is fuming. He has himself worked up in a real lather. He is crying 'foul ball." He is so angry he can't see straight.

What's wrong with Jesse? Has the Attorney General in Illinois or the IRS finally looked into his finances? Or is his onetime mistress demanding more child support money? No, it is none of the above. You see, what has Old Jesse up in a froth is that George Bush won the Presidency.

A consortium of newspapers, including USA Today and the Washington Post and several other papers (none conservative) spent a year counting and recounting in all the various vote configurations which were a consideration in the November 2000 election. Over and over again, to their surprise, they found that George Bush won the election. This included the over-vote and the under-vote, vote configurations which are simply not valid in any other election in America.

The newspaper consortium was terribly surprised that it wasn't the U.S. Supreme Court that really delivered the election to George Bush. It was the voters of Florida who delivered the election to the Governor of Texas. The only possibility for a Gore victory was if every county in Florida was recounted, and under the most liberal standards. But Vice President Gore never asked for that recount. The recount of four counties which he did ask for produced a clear-cut Bush victory.

But Jackson is angry because he says the newspaper consortium failed to take into account all sorts of grievances he had raised late last year. Perhaps that is because the charges Jackson made at the time were also investigated many times over and over by both Federal and state authorities which could find no justification for the complaints.

In fact the only institution which did find merit to Jackson's complaints was a partisan majority of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The Commission, during the Clinton years, acquired ideological blinders. As is the case with Jackson, unless you accept what they charge as being valid, you are racist and unwilling to stand with the disenfranchised downtrodden.

The one chance Jesse Jackson has of electing Janet Reno as Governor of Florida over Jeb Bush, the President's incumbent brother, is to convince the Black and Hispanic communities that Al Gore had the election stolen from him. In that case the minorities will turn out in record numbers and will drive Jeb Bush from office.

The more that objective observers, such as this newspaper consortium, conclude that Bush really is our legitimate President, the more that Jackson and his associates look foolish. Reasonable minorities, who are just every bit as patriotic as the rest of Americans, want to put this issue behind us. Vice President Gore and his running mate Senator Lieberman of Connecticut say that want the issue put aside. "George Bush is our President and we must stay united behind him," Gore said when informed of the study.

So if the two men who lost the closest election in modern times are satisfied that the election wasn't stolen from them (and if anyone would have a right to complain it would be these two) then just where does Jackson get off trying to continue the fight? It is as I said. For Jackson to prevail he must keep Blacks and Hispanics angry. Too bad for him that now the only minorities who continue to be angry are the fringe. The rest are proud to be Americans and proud to serve their nation. By screaming bloody murder over this newspaper consortium study Jackson looks like a sore loser, which he is likely to be a year from now as well if he keeps up this shameful act.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001