Why Norm Coleman Should Concede (with apologies to Peggy Noonan)

Back on December 4, 2000, at the height of the Bush-Gore Florida Recount, conservative columnist Peggy Noonan penned a piece for Time Magazine entitled, “Why Gore Should Concede.”  With Al Franken’s certified victory in the US Senate race coming today, I have decided to edit Ms. Noonan’s piece to reflect the Senate race in Minnesota.

And yes, I took major editorial liberties and didn’t use whole paragraphs because some didn’t work; but the idea is there.  When Gore filed a legal challenge to Bush’s Florida win, the Republicans and Conservatives descended upon the vice president with charges of “Sore Loserman.”  

The shoe is now on the other foot.  Here’s my edited Noonan column:

“Norm Coleman should hang it up.  And then he should hang his head in shame. In a great irony of which he may someday become aware, Coleman proved at the end of his Senatorial campaign what he had spent most of the campaign trying to disprove.  In words and deeds, in photo ops and tactical decisions, he kept trying to demonstrate that he was not George W. Bush’s tool.  And now, at the end, by putting the state of Minnesota through a terrible trauma to serve his own needs and retain personal power, he shows that if he is not a complete Bush clone, he is at the very least a man who has absorbed and accepted the central ethos of Republicanism: “we’ll just have to win then.” No mater what.

“To briskly review: there was a senatorial election, and it was close.  It came down to wrongly rejected absentee ballots. They counted the votes.  On election night, Mr. Coleman won. But it was close, so they had an automatic recount. They counted the votes again from the top of Minnesota to the bottom.  From the west to the east. The recount showed Al Franken to be the winner.

“Great harm has been done by Mr. Coleman’s decision to challenge this election in court.  If he manages to finagle his way back to the Senate, his term is likely to prove a dark saying: When you want it bad, you get it bad.

Mr. Coleman is showing history who he is, and what he is showing is really, truly sad.  There is one group that seems ot me to have distinguished itself with its protests, and that is the new Democratic Party that in its latest incarnation has refound its voice.  And they’re not partisans. They’re patriots.  They are acting out their protectiveness towards a great Republic.  Too bad Coleman couldn’t.