Franken-Gate Continues

It now seems that the Conservative owned and funded WSJ has bad case of sour grapes and in the process shows it’s horrid case of bias in the process.

The WSJ Writes:

The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year’s disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don’t need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.

Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat’s strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.

But the team’s real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman’s lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs.

What Mr. Franken understood was that courts would later be loathe to overrule decisions made by the canvassing board, however arbitrary those decisions were. He was right. The three-judge panel overseeing the Coleman legal challenge, and the Supreme Court that reviewed the panel’s findings, in essence found that Mr. Coleman hadn’t demonstrated a willful or malicious attempt on behalf of officials to deny him the election. And so they refused to reopen what had become a forbidding tangle of irregularities. Mr. Coleman didn’t lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact.

This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire’s team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn’t been counted, setting off a hunt for “new” Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she’d discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.

Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don’t end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

Uh, Sour Grapes much guys? Look, I am about as happy about Al Franken being a damn Senator; as I would be about getting a root canal. But this petty whining and crying, because you lost a legal challenge is just downright childish. Besides, Norm Coleman was most likely out of money and just could not afford to keep fighting. Not only this, The G.O.P. most likely told Coleman to drop it, because the G.O.P. was already bruising from the Mark Sanford scandal.  Not only this, but the G.O.P. is looking towards 2010 and 2012, and the last thing they need; is to be viewed by the General public as a party desperately trying to grasp for power.

Patrick Stack makes a valid point, but in the process dredges up old Democratic Party conspiracy theories and sour grapes of his own:

First, Norm Coleman’s concession was hardly “gracious” — he drew out the process in court for seven months, leaving Minnesota down one senator the whole time. And if anybody is the model for election legal street fights and sketchy vote-count maneuvering through the courts, I think that would have to be the guy who “won” in the 2000 Presidential election.

Glass houses, yo.

Patrick (Nice name, by the way! :D) makes a point in the first part of that, but in that second part, he drags out the old dead tired conspiracy theory that  Bush stole the election.  There is absolutely no valid proof that Bush stole that election, if there was, how come John McCain did not steal this election in 2008? That’s because there was no election fraud at all. The SCOTUS made that decision based upon one big factor, there was no way those votes could be counted down in Florida accurately, in a reasonable amount of time and Bush won more states than Gore; so, the Court decided in Bush’s Favor.  Now am I happy about that? Quite frankly; No, I am not. Bush economic polices proved to be a disaster for this country, his authorizing the bailout of all these banks. The War in Iraq; which Bill O’Reilly himself even has said was a waste.  I could go on and on about that, but I think you know what I mean. I never was a Bush Cheerleader, anyone that reads this blog knows this to be a fact.

Chris Cillizza over at “The Fix” has a nice explanation of how Coleman won, sans the Conservative Sour Grapes.

Which brings me to my final and most important point. I was over at HotAir last night and I happened to watch this video here:

Now, first off this video is supposed to be what MSNBC calls “Fair and Balanced.” If that is fair and balanced, I think I want to move to another Country.  Secondly, If Markos and crew over at DailyKos think that the Democrats are going to now do every little thing that the “Nutroots” wants them to; they are going to be in for a HUGE surprise and letdown.  The Democratic Party establishment looks out for one person and one person alone; itself.  The only difference between the Establishment of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party; is the name.  Sure, the Grassroots or in this case the “Netroots”; may have some limited influence, but when the “Goodyear hits the Asphalt”, so to speak, the Establishment calls the shots and if Markos and company think that this 60 votes myth is going to change that, they are going to be in for a big surprise.