CPAC Blogging: Rove Edition

Political uberguru Karl Rove just spoke and made an, uh… interesting case for a Bush mandate. First, we learn that Bush had the highest vote total in history. Meaning, as you'll be glad to learn, that the population is growing. Reminds me a bit of how Hollywood keeps generating news about box office record breakers by refusing to adjust box reciepts for inflation. Then we learn that he's got the highest vote percentage of any democratic president since the 60s. Which might be relevant if there hadn't been a major third party contender in both of Clinton's elections. Recall, after all, that Clinton's margin over Dole was a whopping seven points. But let's not get into talking about margins.

Now, since 'm not particularly fond of the recent D presidents either, I don't have a dog in the "my mandate is bigger than your mandate" fight. But this kind of stretching just seems sad.

Comments

[Kurt]

I don't care how many days it's been, I'm putting my two cents in.

Major third party candidates don't sprout from the ground every seventeen years like cicadas, they appear when enough people are dissatisfied with the top two candidates. So I think it's fair to take into account the presence of Perot when evaluating Clinton's popularity (which is not to say, of course, that he was less popular than Kerry, Gore, Dukakis et al.).

[Mo]

Well, when you consider that John Kerry got the second most votes ever, it's hard to call this a mandate.