The Party Life in America

Re “In His Image,” Opinion, Jan. 5: William Schneider attempts to continue the Democrats’ rewriting of history when he claims the Supreme Court put George W. Bush in office. The postelection studies of Florida votes concluded that Bush would have been elected if the Supreme Court had allowed votes to be counted as Al Gore requested.

What Schneider also ignores with his unfounded comment are the sleazy tactics of Democrats across the country, such as blocking votes by overseas military personnel and pulling a fast one on Missouri courts to keep polls open late in St. Louis -- not to mention the networks announcing Florida results before the polls closed, costing Bush his advantage in the panhandle counties.

Let’s see now, as the revisionists would have it, a lazy, rich, stupid oilman somehow coerced the Supreme Court into ignoring the Constitution. I guess what the court should have done is allow Florida to ignore the laws that were on its books, as the Florida Supreme Court decided. Give me a break.

Richard Van Kirk

Arcadia

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Why would a liberal Democrat choose to write, and why would The Times choose to print, an analysis of George W. Bush and the Republican Party? Any credibility that Schneider might have had was lost in his first paragraph with the phrase “the Supreme Court, which made Bush president.” Anyone who deals in facts rather than emotions knows that the electoral college elected Bush president and that no one “made Bush president.” Accept the fact that Gore was defeated and move on.

Rick McGuern

La Verne

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Schneider states: “Bush has set out to turn the Republican Party into a party of nice guys.” William Shakespeare: “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

Kurt Weldon

Winnetka

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As former chairman of the Democratic Party in Minnesota, I assure Spero Kessaris (letter, Jan. 3) that the party’s name is not a spurious designation foisted on the public. It is the name the party adopted when it registered with the secretary of State. It’s on our party’s birth certificate and we’d like to keep it. As for his hocus-pocus on subliminal messages, conspiracy theories can cut both ways. Is the Republican Party so named in order to advance the hidden message that Democrats oppose the republican form of government adopted in the U.S. Constitution? Should we defend our status as loyal Americans by relabeling our opposition the “Republic Party”?

That’s not going to happen any time soon because, frankly, Democrats as a group aren’t that paranoid or that petty. (We have our nut cases, I will admit. They just aren’t our elected leaders.) I confess that I smile inwardly when I hear speakers twist the party name into the version they prefer, the “Democrat Party.” I find that so typically Republican -- the belief that one has a God-given right to control the personal decisions of other individuals and groups right down to the name they adopt as their own.

Rick Scott

Ventura

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About shortening the name of the Democratic Party to the “Democrat Party”: I thought until now that the abbreviation was connected to the accelerating pace of life and language in the computer age, so I’ve been referring to the other party as the “Publican Party.”

Elaine Hamilton

South Pasadena