Norm Coleman's Sidekicks as Hypocritcal as He Is

Original Link: http://www.senateguru.com/diary/671/mnsen-colemans-sidekicks-as-hypocritcal-as-coleman

by: Senate Guru

Sometimes birds of a feather really do flock together.
Remember what Republican Norm Coleman said immediately following Election Day 2008, when the incomplete, incorrect tally initially had Coleman up by a few hundred votes?

If you ask me what I would do [if I were in Al Franken's place], I would step back. I just think the need for the healing process is so important. The possibility of any change of this magnitude in the voting system we have is so remote, but that would be my judgment.
That was over five and a half months ago. Coleman obviously stopped thinking that the "need for the healing process" was very important a long time ago - probably right around the time that the recount put Senator-elect Al Franken in the lead.

It is important to note that, while Coleman is Hypocrite-in-Chief of the Coleman campaign, he surrounds himself with likeminded hypocrites.

One of Coleman's top lawyers, Ben Ginsberg, makes himself out to be an ardent defender of "equal protection" (as it is put forth to be one of the key tenets of Coleman's appeal).

Ginsberg reiterated the major themes of the upcoming appeal:

• The three judges allowed "illegal ballots" in the count and, by not following state election law uniformly, election officials statewide violated the "equal protection" rights of thousands of voters;
Clearly, Ginsberg is troubled by what he sees as a violation of "equal protection." But, it turns out, Ginsberg has only very recently found religion on "equal protection." It was not too long ago that he saw it as a notion with "fundamential philosophical" problems:

Just like, really, with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.
Ginsberg isn't the only making arguments he himself doesn't really believe on behalf of Norm Coleman's Hypocritical All-Stars. Vin Weber is a former Congressman from Minnesota turned Washington lobbyist, and is one of Coleman's closest friends and advisers. And Vin would do most anything for his buddy Norm, including drafting an op-ed portraying Coleman's appeal as a courageous and noble struggle for the heart of civic decency in the battle against political cynicism:

The decision by Norm Coleman to appeal the ruling by the three-judge panel in the U.S. Senate election contest ought to be viewed as a courageous step in the long-term interests of all Minnesotans. ...

Let's be clear. The issues here are not about expediency. That's not how Minnesotans view civic life. On the contrary, Minnesota is the place where we value the legitimacy of our elections and the equal opportunity of all citizens to cast a legal ballot and have it counted.

And for that fight on behalf of our constitutional rights -- and the rights of our citizens -- we should all thank Norm Coleman.

Wow, Weber must be a passionate defender of using the legal system to ensure the validity of our democratic process. Oh, wait a sec, it seems that Weber only feels that way when it's a Republican who's on the losing end of an election:

The recount mess in Florida will not turn out to be a marvelous system-reaffirming civics lesson for the country, as some commentators have said, Vin Weber told a Minneapolis audience Thursday.
"It's a civics lesson but in my view it's a bad civics lesson," he said. "It's going to increase cynicism, and it's going to teach politicians in both parties a lesson about not accepting lightly the outcome of a narrow defeat."

Hmmm, not accepting the outcome of a narrow defeat, Weber says. Maybe Coleman accidentally deleted that e-mail from Weber.

In short, the arguments that Coleman and his crew are making are arguments in which they themselves don't even believe. They're arguments against which Republicans have fought for years. But, now that it's politically convenient to embrace them, they're all aboard. They utterly lack any hint of integrity, and they represent the height of political cynicism. MN Progressive Project's Joe Bodell put it best:

here's to hoping the state Supreme Court recognizes snake oil when they smell it.
Coleman has no substance. All he and his hypocritical crew have is snake oil. I agree with Joe: here's hoping that the state Supreme Court Justices recognize it.