In a message dated Thu, 21 Jun 2001 7:37:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "John D.
Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
How about the fact that I was able to present evidence for my point,
whereas all you could present was speculation - speculation, I might add,
which leads directly to several prediction which are known to be false.
If you could make some predictions regarding my hypotheses, and demonstrate
that they are wrong, then I might take your position more seriously.>>
But John, I did present evidence that your hypothesis on Gore replacing Clinton was
wrong. I analyzed the votes in the Senate for conviction, the number of GOP votes, the
number of GOP senators who "defected" in the final vote, and the number of Democratic
senators who would have had to "defect" even if all the GOP voters had stuck to the
party line (12, about 25% of the entire Senate Democratic caucus). I think I showed
pretty conclusively that, barring an outrageous revelation of treason or something
similar that could not have been uncovered during impeachment anyway due to the format
of the trial, there was no way for the GOP to convict Clinton -- and they had to know
it. The GOP knows how to count votes as well as anyone.
Therefore, the central premise of your argument -- that the GOP acted on principle
rather than partisan advantage because succeeding in removing Clinton would only give
Gore an election advantage in 2000 -- is not valid. _There was no chance that Clinton
would be removed._
Your reply, as far as I've seen, is that the GOP said they didn't know it, so we have
to take that on good faith. Even though we can't take statements by the Democrats
regarding impeachment on good faith because you just _know_ they are lying.
And why is my speculation just speculation, while your speculation gets raised to the
level of evidence? If anyone else is even reading this thread, perhaps we could ask
third parties to judge the respective validity of our speculations?
Patrick Sweeney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
