Race, Republicans, and the Return of the Party of Lincoln

6. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Compassionate Conservative versus the Florida Recount

6 One Step Forward, Two Steps Back The Compassionate Conservative versus the Florida Recount SO FAR, I HAVE EXAMINED three obstacles—history, the predispositions of voters, and the media—that political parties face in attempting to reshape their images. Chapter 6 explores the role of one additional barrier—the parties themselves. Speci‹cally, I investigate what happens when a political party does not convey a consistent image of itself. As discussed earlier, the incorporation of new information into individuals’ party images depends on existing perceptions of the party. People more willingly encode information that is consistent with their extant partisan stereotypes. If citizens encounter both a new picture of a party and an alternative version of the party that conforms to the old, they will discount the new projected party image. Therefore , a party’s attempt to modify its image is largely contingent on its ability to maintain the new projected version of itself. When the party retreats from its new image, citizens’ perceptions of the party will revert back to the original picture. With respect to the example used throughout this book—the GOP’s attempt to reshape its racial symbolism—I examined the Republican Party’s image in light of the dispute over the 2000 election. The Republican Party’s alleged participation in activities aimed at disenfranchising minorities directly con›icted with the picture of the party painted during the 2000 Republican National Convention. As a result, the GOP’s attempt to improve its racial symbolism was subverted. Dimpled Chads and Disenfranchised Voters On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States of America. Not since the election of 123 1876, however, had a presidential election generated such controversy. George W. Bush received 50,456,002 votes, 47.87 percent of the popular vote. His opponent, Al Gore, received 48.38 percent of the popular vote. Nevertheless, Bush won the election by winning Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes. Bush had won Florida, the state where his brother served as governor, by 537 votes. Ironically, Florida, one of the disputed states in the 1876 election, lay at the heart of the controversy 124 years later. As Walton and Smith (2003) explained, The 2000 election is controversial because in effect the “loser” became the “winner.” It is also controversial because there were widespread allegations of voting irregularities and suppression of the black vote in Florida—the state that gave Bush his one-vote margin of victory in the electoral college. Finally, the 2000 election is controversial because the Supreme Court affected its outcome by stopping an ongoing recount of the Florida vote. (160) Many observers argued that Bush’s win was illegitimate and that the presidency had been stolen or at least bought. The mainstream discussion of the election centered on miscast or uncounted ballots. As Kellner (2001) explained, “[I]t was revealed on November 8 that many usually Democratic Party voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, had accidentally voted for ultra-rightwing candidate Pat Buchanan because of the confusing, and allegedly illegal, ‘butter ›y’ ballot that listed the candidates side by side with arrows pointing to the holes to be punched” (31–32). Furthermore, close to 20,000 ballots had been disquali‹ed as a result of faulty voting equipment . Still-attached chads1 prevented citizens’ votes from being counted. Along with the discussions of dimpled chads and butter›y ballots were allegations of corruption. Several media accounts indicated that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris “commissioned a Republican -connected ‹rm to ‘cleanse’ voter lists of felons, and in so doing had wiped off around 100,000 legitimate voters, mostly African American and poor voters who tended to vote Democrat” (Kellner 2001, 39). Moreover, several reports indicated that African Americans had been harassed and denied the right to vote when they arrived at vari124 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln 1. According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., chads are “small pieces of paper or cardboard produced in punching paper tape or data cards.” ous voting sites (Kellner 2001, 33). Finally, USA Today, in conjunction with several other newspapers, found that “in precincts where blacks were the majority, 8.9 percent of the votes were uncounted compared to 2.4 percent in white majority precincts and 3 percent statewide.” In addition, this study found that all of the precincts with the highest percentage of spoiled...