Kathryn Harris

[dtotire]

From the NEW REPUBLIC

Makeup Call
by Jonathan Chait
Post date 08.31.06 | Issue date 09.11.06
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Not very long ago, the term conservatives most often used to describe Katherine Harris was "rock star." Writing in The Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz praised her as "a local official in Florida who looked to the letter of the law for guidance at a time when we needed the law the most." Among conservatives, this was one of the more measured assessments. In the eyes of her admirers, she was Mother Teresa, Marie Curie, and Joan of Arc all rolled into one--passionate, deeply moral, and honest as the day is long. Not only that, she was also smart as a whip and a looker to boot. ("In person, Mrs. Harris comes across as brainy, ultrapetite and softly glamorous," reported The Washington Times.)

In the last few months, though, many of Harris's starry-eyed fans have undertaken a critical reappraisal of their erstwhile heroine. It turns out that she may not be a paragon of sound judgment after all. Today, conservatives tend to describe Harris with synonyms for "insane."

The newfound Republican doubts about Harris spring not from a single event, but an accumulation of small, bizarre episodes. She made a speech about a terrorist plot (to blow up a power grid in Indiana) that turned out to be wholly imaginary. She accused newspapers of publishing doctored photographs of her. She has raged against her staff, accusing aides of secretly working for her opponent. Since 2003, while serving as a member of Congress and running for Senate, she has had four chiefs of staff and four press secretaries leave her office. In 2006 alone, more than a dozen staffers have quit. Many of them have described her erratic behavior and irrational tirades to the press.

!

Harris's ongoing meltdown has rendered her politically radioactive. Her November opponent, Democrat Bill Nelson, was initially considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the Senate. Yet Harris's campaign has been such a disaster that polls show her losing by 30 points. A number of Republicans, including, reportedly, representatives of Jeb Bush, have pleaded with her to quit the race so the party can put up a stronger challenger, but she has adamantly refused, insisting that God wants her to be a senator. (This sort of rationale is notoriously difficult to refute.) Indeed, appeals to reason by her fellow Republicans seem only to have stiffened her resolve. Jeb Bush's efforts to recruit another GOP challenger "drove her crazy, but it didn't take her long to get there," former Harris pollster Ed Rollins told The Miami Herald.



Oh, you don't say. It's gratifying to see Republicans acknowledge that Harris is a batty, irrational megalomaniac who's in way over her head. But some of us picked up on that quite some time ago. When she first emerged on the national scene during the Florida recount, Harris was known as a "polarizing" figure--one who inspired wildly different reactions among conservatives and liberals. Illustration by David CowlesThat the assessment of Harris is increasingly a matter of bipartisan consensus is all to the good. And yet, it seems that the full historic implications of this new consensus have not been sufficiently explored.

Harris, after all, played a singularly decisive role in making George W. Bush president. As Florida's secretary of state, she initially forbade counties from conducting their own recounts, delaying the process for weeks so that, when the recount eventually started, it could not be completed in time for the deadline to certify electors. As Lance deHaven-Smith, a Florida State University political scientist and author of The Battle for Florida, told The Tampa Tribune, "It would never have gone to the Supreme Court if she had simply allowed the counties to complete their recounts." Deadlock, The Washington Post's history of the recount, concurred: "What is clear is that Bush enjoyed an enormous advantage because of the presence of his brother in the governor's office and Katherine Harris as secretary of state." Democrats and Republicans still view the Florida recount as divergently as they once viewed Harris. Now that a new consensus is forming that Harris is a loon, though, shouldn't a new consensus on the recount she conducted follow?

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Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.
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[saltpoint]

1. Harris helped Bush steal the 2000 election from Al Gore.

I can accept it when my side loses fair and square.

I can't accept it when the other side cheats to win.

[Dr.Phool]

2. Who are you to question God's will?

She said God wants her to be a Senator. Even Jesus was known to hang around with skanks every now and then!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[saltpoint]

3. You've got me there, Dr. Phool. And truth be known, I even believe in

separation of church and state.

I seek forgiveness on humble knees.