From The Archives:
Bush's Conspiracy to Riot
By Robert Parry
August 5, 2009 (Originally Posted August 5, 2002)Editor’s Note: As the American Right celebrates its success in disrupting “town hall” meetings where congressional Democrats try to discuss health-care reform with constituents, the ugly precedent for these hooligan tactics is the Republican-organized riot in Miami that stopped a recount in Election 2000.
What was extraordinary about the supposedly spontaneous riot on Nov. 22, 2000, was that it was -- we later learned -- organized and financed by George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, which had flown in Republican operatives to pose as outraged local residents.
Some of that was reported at the time – though downplayed – but more details emerged in summer 2002 when the Internal Revenue Service forced the Bush campaign to disclose its recount expenditures.
After release of those IRS documents, we published the following story, which contrasted how the U.S. government reacted to the definitive evidence that Bush and other top Republicans had dispatched rioters across state lines to disrupt the democratic process in 2000 against what was done to alleged riot organizers at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
The big difference, of course, was that in 1968 the alleged riot organizers were anti-war radicals who faced prosecution, when in 2000, the riot organizers went on to seize control of the U.S. government and thus escaped all punishment.
Having succeeded with the hooliganism in 2000 – and having paid no price – the Republicans and their right-wing allies appear to be following a similar script to block health-care reform now:
More than three decades apart, two political riots influenced the outcome of U.S. presidential elections.In 1968, protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago hurt Democrat Hubert Humphrey and helped Republican Richard Nixon eke out a victory. On Nov. 22, 2000, the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” of Republican activists helped stop a vote recount in Miami -- and showed how far George W. Bush’s supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House.
But the government reaction to the two events was dramatically different. The clashes between police and Vietnam War protesters in 1968 led the Nixon administration to charge seven anti-war radicals with “conspiring to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot.”
The defendants, who became known as the Chicago Seven, were later acquitted of conspiracy charges, in part, because the protests were loosely organized and because solid documentary evidence was lacking.
After the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” – named after the protesters’ preppie clothing – no government action was taken beyond the police rescuing several Democrats who were surrounded and roughed up by the rioters. While no legal charges were filed against the Republicans, newly released documents show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush’s recount committee.
read the rest:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/080409d.html
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