Nicolle Wallace on the imminent reversal of Roe:
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 20, 2022
"How did we get here?"
How long did you work in Republican politics again?
On the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, Grace Panetta in Business Insider recalled
On November 22, 2000, a group of well-dressed Republican
protesters descended on a government office building in Miami. They were there
to protest the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board's recount in the disputed
presidential race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. They
wanted to stop what they regarded as a steal, and they were prepared to resort
to violence to do it.
The Brooks Brothers riot revived a new blueprint for electoral disputes, one that openly deployed violence and intimidation to frighten officials into discarding legitimate votes. Like the January 6, 2021 pro-Trump siege on the US Capitol, it was sought to replace the rule of law with mob rule.
And like that brazen assault on democracy, it was orchestrated at the top levels of the GOP. The weapon-toting, MAGA hat-clad insurrectionists of 2021 directly descend from the buttoned-down, stop-the-steal rioters of 2000.
The participants of the demonstration, primarily organized by senior Bush campaign official Brad Blakeman, became irate that the three-member canvassing board had gone to an upstairs room out of the public view and entered the building to vocally protest the process.
When local Democratic official Joe Geller went downstairs to get a blank sample ballot to demonstrate something to his colleagues, he was surrounded by the protesters who loudly accused him of stealing a voters' ballot and hounded him all the way back upstairs.
Both he and then-Democratic operative Luis Rosera got caught up in a scuffle and described being kicked and punched by the increasingly unwieldy crowd, The New York Times reported, with sheriffs' deputies having to intervene to quell the brouhaha and escort the canvassing board to safety.
At this link, you will find that the Times at the time reported
The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public. Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order.
When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting.
Panetta added
The incident, which is now often referred to as the Brooks Brothers riot or rebellion, intimidated the board into suspending their already-scaled back recount altogether, resulting in many votes going uncounted and lost in the "what-ifs" of history.
Nicole Wallace was not involved in the effort to stop a recount which would have contributed to determining who was legitimately elected President of the USA. However, she was part of the recount travesty in Florida in 2000 as press secretary for Governor John Ellis Bush ("JEB"). She proceeded to join the George W Bush administration, then served on Bush's re-election campaign and afterward in the second Bush administration.
It is said "confession is good for the soul." Alas, it rarely benefits a professional career. Nicole Wallace could confess her own role in creating the modern Republican Party, which is a mere exaggeration- not a perversion-- of the Republican Party she happily and profitably participated in. But with her popularity riding high among MSNBC viewers, there is no practical reason for her to admit her complicity in the muck and mud that is- and has been- the Republican Party.
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