Hell, if you’re going to posit total involvement in the plot, then anything is possible. If the entire country, including the complete judiciary, decide you are better off dead, bye-bye! And if the Moon was made of green cheese, baboons would fly out of my ass. I could just as well speculate on how much action I would get if every other man on the planet dropped dead tomorrow. (I still wouldn’t get lucky with Charisma Carpenter, I’m sure! 
)
Bush still leaves office at noon on 1/20/08. The Speaker gets the job even if he doesn’t want it (and he would, he would, no matter who it is). Meanwhile, anybody in the government who doesn’t want to take orders from the unemployed civilian squatting in the Oval Office doesn’t have to.
I wish. Actually 1/20/09. 924 days from now, but who’s counting?
1/20/09.
Regards,
Shodan
Ok fine, I see you guys are having trouble with the OP. I know it’s silly, but pretend I’m writing a novel using the names of real people.
We’ll assume that some states withheld their election results for various reasons untill the conflict was resolved (conservative states siding with Bush) so as to prevent the final totals from becoming official. Henceforth, election held but results in limbo. No real new President Elect.
Who would have the balls and authority to organise the needed troops or Sheriff Deputies and go knocking on the White House door?
Every Democrat and half the Republicans in the country?
The Secret Service.
Regards,
Shodan
I think that’s a fair question. He seems to have high support among the military (it sort of helps to keep opposing viewpoints off of the Armed Forces Network). If enough officers pledged loyalty to Bush, I think they could keep the Secret Service at bay quite well.
With all the apathy going around these days I don’t think anyone would really notice or give a damn. The few people would, but then they’d get howled out of the forums and sites like straightdope by people who call them conspiracists. “If it were illegal he wouldn’t have gotten away with it, right?”
Considering that the Secret Service already is in the White House, it would be more a matter of the Secret Service holding off the military.
I rather doubt “high support” equates to “violating the Constitution and two hundreds years of tradition for a recent politician with an approval rate around 40%”.
Regards,
Shodan
Who would have the balls to arrest the ex-president if elections were “cancelled” due to some unspecified chicanery? The constitution is very clear about sucession, if due to whatever reason no president or vice president were chosen by the regular election, the Speaker of the House would become president.
Does the Speaker of the House have no political ambitions? Does she not want to be president…even if just to oust the coup-plotters? Why wouldn’t ex-speaker Pelosi, now President Pelosi just call up the Secret Service and ask them to evict ex-president Bush?
Look, if you want to change the game such that a majority of the military, congress, supreme court, federal government, state government, and general population support Bush’s coup, then of course the coup will succeed. Any time the American people decide we want to scrap the constitution in favor of dictatorship, then dictatorship we shall have.
But one does not become dictator by proclaiming oneself dictator, even if one has previously been an elected executive. Of course we have plenty of examples of elected presidents in third world countries deciding that national security demands that they remain in power. But that’s because they had no tradition of democracy, and powerful factions benefited from the president remaining/becoming dictator.
For example, the dictator favors his own minority ethnic group, so they support him. The army might support him because he promises them favors. Soldiers might support him because they are personally loyal to him rather than loyal to the country. Goon squads/Paramilitaries might support him because they like cracking heads with impunity, and they look forward to the graft possible for a loyal servant of a dictator. The general public might support him because the country is wracked by divisions that seem to have no democratic solution, there might be outside threats or sinister internal threats that can only be met by “unity”. And so on.
And none of those apply to the US, unless you arbitrarily assert that they do in your scenario. So yes, a dictator could concievably become president of the US then seize absolute power. But the president can’t make himself dictator just by declaring himself dictator, he’d have to do a lot of work first before it would be possible. And no, getting us into a war and hyping fears of terrorists and gays doesn’t count. At the very least you need a hard core of followers who don’t give a crap about democracy and aren’t afraid to use violence and feel that they would personally benefit if their leader became dictator.
To take the Republican party as an example, how do rank and file Republicans benefit when Bush seizes dictatorial power? They don’t benefit, they lose, because they’ll now be living in a dictatorship. Sure, it’s great when the dictator rounds up the gays, but what about when he rounds up the Mormons? It’s great when he shuts up those traitorous newspapers, but what about when he shuts down talk radio? Senators and congressmen and judges enjoy their power and want to increase it, they aren’t interested in becoming stooges to a dictator.
So it all comes back to the same question, who’s gonna back Bush’s coup? You can just assert that Congress backs the coup, but WHY? And who backs the Congress? Why does Congress vote to make itself irrelevant? Why do they think they can get away with it? If the cops and the soldiers and the bankers don’t go along with the coup the coup doesn’t happen.
Around 40% seems a mite generous when polling the country as a whole. But consider the military. Zogby quotes a poll that says that almost 90% of the troops think that the Iraq was was in retaliation of 9/11. If so many can believe that, I am not so certain that they wouldn’t follow Dear Leader in a coup.
Optimistic about the Democrat’s chances in November, huh? 
But yeah, while a lot of the military might like Bush now, if he tries to pull something like that, they’re going to stop liking him.
You’re unbelievable. Does this ring a bell?
“I, (state your name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”
The military is composed of citizens, we do not turn into unthinking creatures just because we sign up, and your suggestion that we would violate our oath and simultaneously betray our fellow citizens by participating in a coup is reprehensible.
Lemur866, I’m not trying to work out a scenario where my guy gets to stay in the WH longer (that aint the case), I’m merely trying to find out who would be the guy with the authority to ask him to leave and what measures would be taken. I haven’t moved the goal posts and I’m not saying that a majority of any one group would be in favor of him staying. You’re stretching the OP a bit too far. I appreciate your input, but I think you’ve read too much into the OP.
If the Speaker of the House becomes acting President…is this allowable under the constitution if the last President Elect is still alive and the new one hasn’t been inaugurated? Would congress hold an emergency vote and declare the Speaker the POTUS, …can they?
The thing I really hate about these scenarios is that there is no end to the “Yeah buts…”
If the President refused to step down, the Secret Service would escort him from the White House just after noon on January 20, 2009.
“Yeah, but what if the USSS was in on it?”
Then there’d be a hue and cry from the Congress, regardless of political party.
“Yeah, but what if the President locked them all in a cave?”
Then the U.S. military would mount some sort of response to a domestic enemy of the Constitution.
“Yeah, but what if every single member of the Army has been sent to Iraq when this all happens?”
Then the people of the United States would rise up and there’d be serious hell to pay.
“Yeah, but what if everyone was so oblivious that the entire country was enthralled with American Idol at the time?”
And so on, and so on, and so on. The bottom line is that there is a million and one ways in which a coup like this would fail, and only one way in which is could succeed (namely, a whole series of unthinkable events happens at exactly the same moment). It is really tiresome to run through the whole list of those one million reasons why Bush isn’t going to be a dictator.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. Your belief that the armed forces would respect over 200 years of tradition and would not participate in a coup is well founded. You’re probably right. I’m just acknowledging that under the right circumstances, it is not impossible for the military to abandon this tradition and support this sort of coup. You may put the probability at 0, I might put it at 1%. All I’m saying is that it is not utterly impossible.
That’s a Constitutional question that goes all the way back to David Rice Atchison. Nobody really knows for sure, but what is for certain is that the term for the President ends precisely at noon on Inauguration Day, so Bush, as a 2-term President, would be ineligible for retention based upon the 22nd Amendment no matter what.
Actually, in reality (what a concept!) if W tried something like that Laura would kick him in the nuts and drag his sorry ass out of the building, while apologising to the staff for the disruption.
Congress has provided for that case by law, the Speaker of the House becomes president if there is no President or Vice president.