Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman Rallies the Faithful Tonight in Fort Lauderdale

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who remains locked in a contentious battle with challenger Al Franken for his Senate seat, struck a confident tone in an informal speech Friday evening to Jewish Republicans in Fort Lauderdale for the annual conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Senator Coleman seems to believe he’ll retain the seat.

“I’m not wringing my hands,” he said.

He reviewed the status of his situation, and the sequence of events leading to the current standoff.

“I had more votes on election night, and I had more votes when the recount began,” he said. He explained that, when the controversy erupted, state officials asked Minnesota county officials if they wished to do a recount.

“Democratic counties said they had made mistakes, Republican counties said they didn’t,” he recalled.

So the recount was not universal, but selective, with Democratic counties doing most of it.

“Then, when Al Franken got ahead they said, ‘Let’s stop counting,’” he recalled. “They’re very good at that.”

He said he is confident that when every vote is counted he will be the winner and that, though he hates to tie up the people of Minnesota, democracy requires care.

“I am sorry it’s taken so long, but this is not fast food, it’s the underpinnings of democracy.”

He went on to rally the crowd with a speech about cleaving to conservative values in tough times, taking the present administration to task for the stimulus and efforts to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections.

“You are not going to do something for working men and women if you put us in debt for generations … ” he said. “You are not going to do something for working men and women if you take away the right to vote by secret ballot in a union election.”

He recalled a time earlier in his career when he invited Jimmy Carter to come and speak at a function, and the former President delivered remarks, the thrust of which were that if the United States was “nice” to demagogues like Hugo Chavez, we “would have nothing to worry about.”

He realized at the time, he said, that his 18-year-old son had a better understanding of the fundamentals of human nature than Carter did.

Recalling President Bush, Senator Coleman said, “We had a President who was right about human nature and the nature of terrorism. And history will show it.”

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