"Why hasn't Bush asked for a recount in Republican counties? I don't know." Says troll.

Well the simplest reason is that he doesn't want to risk being defeated if the votes were really counted across the state, and prefers to hang on to the lead which he fluked. (600 or so votes in 6 million is a fluke by any standards, especially when there are tens of thousands which could be in question.)

After all, it wouldn't have taken any longer to count all the votes than to count one large county, even at Florida speed.

"If the shoe had been on the other foot, I'm pretty sure Gore would be doing everything humanly posible to hang onto his lead." You may well be right.

If in those circumstances, Gore had tried to stop the recounts, he would, in my view anyway, have shown himself up as a man totally unworthy of any elected office. "A pompous little crook" was the appropriate term I suggested for him in those circumstances, earlier in the thread..

Would I be right to assume that ,in those circumstances, troll would be calling for Bush to concede, and for him to refuse to countenance any manual recounts?

I'm not being sarcastic here - it can be argued that what matters is to get the whole thing out of the way without a fuss, even if the person "elected" actually got fewer votes. (Well, of course, Bush did get quite a lot fewer votes than Bush overall - but I mean votes where it counts, for electoral college purposes, since it's the system you've still got.)

But if people have one set of rules for their own side, and a different set for the other side in the same situation, that is plain dishonest, whichever side they are on. And it treats the outcome of an election as more important than maintaining the processes of democracy. And that is a very slippery slope, and a lot of other countries in their time have slid down it, and it ends up somewhere very unpleasant indeed.