The Republicans are demonstrating that they have no desire or ability to play nice politically. This week, the Minnesota election board announced that after their recount of the extremely close Senate race, Democrat Al Franken is ahead by 50 votes. There is still the question of a thousand or so improperly rejected absentee ballots, but almost everyone believes those will favor Franken.
In response, John Cornyn, the incoming chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, immediately came out swinging, accusing the Franken campaign of promoting “chaos and disorder” and calling the 50 vote lead “artificial”. Republican Norm Coleman claims that 150 ballots were counted twice, although he hasn’t presented any evidence of this, and the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected Coleman’s resulting suit to prevent the count from being certified. Without any evidence to support its claims, isn’t it the Coleman campaign that is promoting chaos and disorder?
But the really ironic thing is that Cornyn announced that he would fight seating Franken in the Senate, even if Franken is declared the winner, and even provisionally. As Electoral Vote points out, Cornyn conveniently forgets that in January of 2007, the Democrats (who were in control of Congress) voted to provisionally seat Republican Vern Buchanan of Florida, despite plenty of evidence of election problems.
You would think that after the drubbing they received in 2006 and 2008, the Republican would have figured out that the voters are tired of partisan obstructionism and fighting, but it looks like we are in for more of the same from them in the future.
