From Yellowcake to Abu Grahib to Katrina and Scooter, Gonzales and the rest, the markers were there at the genesis of the Bush administration:
[The] biggest clue about what they were up to came in 2000 with the Florida recount. I know it seems like ancient history to go back to that but it is extremely important to remember just how outrageous their tactics were: the Gore campaign used legal tactics and the Bush campaign didn’t. There was the “bourgeois riot” and dirty trickster Roger Stone directing the street theatre from a van. (Here’s a list of what the Village Voice termed the five worst Bush recount outrages.) They used every lever of power they could to count illegally cast overseas ballots. They operated a hypocritical and situational media campaign that the press completely failed to properly analyze until it was too late. And after they did they helpfully told those who objected to “get over it.”
And I guess we did.
And what always bakes my biscuit about Florida being called a red state is the certain knowledge that Bush did not carry Florida in 2000. The same people who acknowledge that the election was both stolen and rigged also buy into the idea that we voted for Bush. I don’t even know if we went for him in 2004.