By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)
March 15, 2000
The Washington Post and CNN announced last night that "tremendous victories" won by George W. Bush and Al Gore gave each of them the nomination of their respective parties and almost instantaneously the tone of the campaign moved from primary battles with fellow party candidates to each other.
The Post announced, as if the conviction of Maria Tsia, Gore's friend and organizer for the Buddhist Temple fund-raiser, on five felony charges were ancient history: "Gore, once ridiculed for raising money at a Buddhist temple, tonight offered himself as the reformer in the race, willing to wash special interest money out of politics and always "tell it like it is.' Bush, forced to the right in his GOP primary contest against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), revived his 'compassionate conservative' theme and promised he would leave no child behind.
"Unlike the partisan sniping of their victory speeches a week ago, Bush and Gore tonight offered loftier rhetoric and broader appeals after their overwhelming victories in the six states. In a steamy high school gym here, Gore said he hoped to use the campaign to 'rekindle the spirit of America' and 'breathe life back into our democratic process.
The story of this election is that the people have spoken loudly and clearly throughout the primaries and they are speaking still and what they want is reform, what they want is change, what they want is openness and honesty and getting this special interest influence out of there,' Gore said."
So, evidently, we are to understand from what Gore is saying, the best guard a bank could have against bank robbery is to find and put in charge of the bank's treasury a bank robber, because he would best know how the stealing is done. Therefore, since Al Gore appears to participated in illegal fund raising and certainly was obviously the beneficiary of funds raised illegally in the Clinton-Gore campaign of 1996, we Americans should put him in charge of "reforming" campaign finance laws.
In an effort to grab the initiative, Gore sent an e-mail message to Bush, challenging him to stop the Republican National Committee from spending on unlimited, unregulated "soft money" issue ads. Gore said he would "take the first step" by asking the Democratic National Committee to not run any "soft money" ads "unless and until" the GOP does.
"Thus it's up to you and your party whether you want to start the ad war arms race; you have the power to join me in banning soft money," Gore said, as he read his message aloud off a computer screen in a classroom here. "If you are willing to do the right thing we can change politics forever."
Asked about the ad, which obviously Gore gave to the media, lest Bush miss it in the deluge of congratulatory e-mail, a bemused Bush responded: ""This is a man who said he wanted to ban soft money, then turned around and said he was going to go out and raise $35 million in soft money. ...Al Gore can't solve campaign finance problems when he symbolizes them."
The generally unreported vote totals in the six Southern states voting yesterday continued the trend I noted in yesterday's analysis, (
I started out a life of politics many years ago in Tennessee when the thought of a REPUBLICAN being elected for any office was laughable. Yet, five of the six Southern states holding primaries yesterday rolled up much larger Republican than Democrat majorities with 2,138,857 voters voting for Republican Candidates and 1 ,769,786 voting for Democrat candidates.
Contrary to the media critics of George W. - so far he seems to be doing quite well against the man he supposedly could never expect to beat.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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