News Bush Calls off 2008 Election: Is America Headed Towards a Civil War?

[TheStatutoryApe]

I'm still not with you. How would he use those forces to enact his goal?

The military is a volunteer force of ordinary citizens, who pledge their allegiance to The Constitution, not the President. What is your basis for thinking they would back someone who violated the Constitution and attempted to sieze dictatorial power?

If a significantly major incident or number of incidents occurred the president could call for instituting Martial Law.
This could legally suspend the election process as far as I understand it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law
Ok.. In 1861 the courts in Maryland rejected Lincoln imposing martial law but he ignored them. It was decided by the Supreme Court in 1866 that the imposition of martial law, or suspension of habeas corpus, was unconstitutional as long as local courts are still open and running. The current US administration has used it's power to suspend habeas corpus already.

 

[russ_watters]

Exigent circumstances, Ape: For the civil war, there was a very real threat to the existence of the US, and even then, Lincoln did not have the unequivocal support of the military.

While I could conceive of postponing the election for, perhaps, a day due to a massive terrorist attack (one of similar scale to 9/11), nothing short of an atom bomb in DC on a workday would be a good enough reason to actually cancel it (or, rather, postpone it long enough to miss inauguration day in Jan).

Remember - the question is not what justification could Bush use, it's what justification would the military accept. The scenario would go something like this:

Terrorists take down the Sears Tower on the morning of election day. Bush institutes martial law and "postpones" the election. Days pass and Bush makes no plans for when the election will happen. People in government start grumbling about it. After 2 weeks with no commitment, the grumbing becomes a roar and leading congressmen petition the USSC to issue a warrant for his arrest. The US Marshalls are called to the White House to arrest him. The Marine Corps company and USSC guarding the White House...let them in and escort them to the west wing, where they arrest him.

 

[Anttech]

OR...
Bush shares his plans to increase military spending by 1000% even the most uncorruptable people are curruptable...

 

[loseyourname]

OR...
Bush shares his plans to increase military spending by 1000% even the most uncorruptable people are curruptable...

That would require the cooperation of at least 51 senators and a majority of the House, none of whom would be likely to be re-elected after cooperating. Bush cannot increase spending by himself.

And why would that corrupt the military anyway? They get more cool toys and more wars to fight? They get paid either way.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Exigent circumstances, Ape: For the civil war, there was a very real threat to the existence of the US, and even then, Lincoln did not have the unequivocal support of the military.
While I could conceive of postponing the election for, perhaps, a day due to a massive terrorist attack (one of similar scale to 9/11), nothing short of an atom bomb in DC on a workday would be a good enough reason to actually cancel it (or, rather, postpone it long enough to miss inauguration day in Jan).
Remember - the question is not what justification could Bush use, it's what justification would the military accept. The scenario would go something like this:
Terrorists take down the Sears Tower on the morning of election day. Bush institutes martial law and "postpones" the election. Days pass and Bush makes no plans for when the election will happen. People in government start grumbling about it. After 2 weeks with no commitment, the grumbing becomes a roar and leading congressmen petition the USSC to issue a warrant for his arrest. The US Marshalls are called to the White House to arrest him. The Marine Corps company and USSC guarding the White House...let them in and escort them to the west wing, where they arrest him.

I understand. I was typing that up and my co-worker relieved me before I could really add any comment to it.
The thing is ofcourse that I didn't find anything regarding whether or not elections would be held up due to the institution of martial law. What I did find is that technically martial law is illegal though it could be pointed out that it's already been established in the past and to a very limited degree by the current admin. We have approximately three years to go for things to escalate further though the current political climate would make it rather difficult to push the envelope further.
There would have to be a rather major incident as I stated before and what would be more conducive to pushing martial law and a hold on the elections to boot would likely be a series of incidents. The easiest to justify both that I can think of so far would be attacks or threats of attacks on voting stations. An escalation toward something in line with a civil war may also be strong enough to allow the current admin to hold off elections. In this case the civil unrest due to holding off of elections could possibly be manuevered artfully enough to perpetuate the hold in and of itself though hopefully congress would be smart enough to realize that this would just become a self perpetuating cycle. It's not that hard to imagine though a group of radicals say protesting electronic voting machines by bombing or attacking stations where they are used. Paranoia over another "stolen election".
I'm thinking that an arrest of the president would not come off nearly as smoothely and efficiently as you would indicate. While the grunts and lower level officers may well be quite willing to allow it I doubt anyone in the higher ranks really wants to be responsable for such a decision or even among those in congress. I'm thinking it would be held off for some time and perhaps quite a while if the circumstances of what led to the situation were right.
One way or another I'm quite sure it would lead to a civil war like scenario and people deserting the military. If a "state of war" could some how be instituted then the number of military willing to risk being shot for treason might be rather low.

Just throwing around scenarios. I don't think it is very likely to happen but I think the feasability of pulling it off isn't quite as low as some of you think.

 

[MaxS]

Wait a second.. doesn't it say in the constitution somewhere that there is to be an election every four years? I didn't know saying "nah, we're not in the mood to have an election this time around" was an option. What are they going to do away with checks and balances while they're at it?

Yeah funny thing. The bill of rights is in the constitution too, but they've already side stepped that with the patriot act. Actually the administration has a real history of suspending the bill of rights during times of war; the problem is now we're in a state of perpetual war, seemingly in the early stages of approaching an orwellian 1984.

If the administration can get away with suspending the bill of rights, what makes you think they can't simply suspend the entire constitution?