Win at Any Cost
by Lynn Woolley

Now is not the time for Republicans to practice the fine art of bi-partisanship. With the presidency hanging in the balance, the George W. Bush election team should mount a fight to the finish to make sure Al Gore does not steal this election. But wait! Isn't Al Gore simply asking for a true accounting of the votes in Florida? Isn't he just trying to protect democracy?

The answer is a resounding NO. There might have been a time when a kinder, gentler Al Gore would have put his country ahead of political ambition. But the modern, Clintonized Al Gore is out to win at any cost.

Want proof?

Let's go back to February of 1996. The President of the United States was looking for ways to pad the upcoming vote for his own re-election, and to regain lost seats in the House and the Senate. The idea came up to use the INS "Citizenship USA" program, also known as CUSA. A memo had been forwarded to Mr. Clinton by Henry Cisneros, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The memo originated with a California organization that complained of a backlog of applications for US citizenship in the Los Angeles area. The part of the memo that intrigued the President was a statement that the aliens would be denied the right to vote.

A lightbulb went off in the President's head. If he could get these aliens spirited through the system by September 1, they could all register to vote -- and most new citizens tend to vote for Democratic Party candidates. Further investigation showed that up to one million new voters could be had if a few rules were bent and the process was expedited. The President had the INS concentrate on some key areas, and named a point-man to ensure that the naturalization process would produce a million new voters in time for the election.

The White House saw the possibility of using such issues as Affirmative Action and the minimum wage to lure these new voters to the polls -- if only barriers to citizenship could be removed in time. It would take a "re-invention of the INS" effort, but the White House insisted that it be done. For example, if FBI arrest records could be excluded from some of these aliens' files, that would help immensely in keeping the rejection rate down.

In his book "Sell Out," impeachment lawyer David Schippers asserts that the President's push for expedited citizenship resulted in the following:

*More than 75,000 new citizens with arrest records

*115,000 new citizens whose fingerprints were unclassifiable

*61,000 new citizens with no fingerprints submitted at all

*New citizens who couldn't speak a word of English

Schippers says that part of the re-inventing process also seemed to be "social promotion" in the civics test given to applicants. They were simply asked the same questions over and over until the applicants got enough of them correct. The bottom line is that Bill Clinton got thousands of new voters in time for the 1996 elections, and the United States got thousands of new citizens who are criminals.

So what does all this have to do with the current election stalemate?

Simply this: The states that Bill Clinton concentrated on to improve the odds for Democrats though the CUSA program were California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida. Yes, Florida.

Oh yes, the "point-man," charged with the task of re-inventing the INS was Mr. Clinton's own Vice-President, Al Gore.

That means that the same man who participated in the laundering of money at a Buddhist Temple, and who conducted questionable fund-raising campaigns on government property has also been directly involved in attempting to unduly influence the outcome of an election. Gore has been there, and done that, and so has his campaign chairman William Daly. Neither of them will hesitate to do whatever it takes to snatch this election from George W. Bush.

That why Mr. Bush and his team should not worry about being "fair" and bipartisan." They should recognize that the Gore campaign will stop at nothing to win, and they should be equally prepared to fight for this election.