Ed Koch shocked by Bill Moyers' 'Coup' Comment on PBS

Shocked by Bill Moyers' 'Coup' Comment and Radical Media:
George F. Will’s November 9 New York Post column contained a reference to the incident. He wrote:
“On election night on public television - your tax dollars at work - Bill Moyers said: 'I think if Kerry were to win this in a - in a tight race, I think there’d be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. ... I mean that the right wing is not going to accept it.' Moyers, the emblematic face of public television, is an intellectual icon in the sort of deep blue precincts that think red America is paranoid.”

Ed Koch, one of New York's three most colorful mayors of the 20th century (the others being Walker and LaGuardia), notes in a column on NewsMax.com that this is the only discussion of the incident he saw other than his own. He quotes Moyer as subsequently explaining he didn't mean a military coup, just one like 2000.

Well, as I have said before, resort to the Supreme Court was constitutionally inappropriate, but it didn't change the result. The Florida legislature had been prepared to do its duty under the constitution and settle the question by choosing the electors themselves - and that is what should have been done. But, any way you slice it, Bush was going to win Florida and, with it, the election.

Several investigations by the main stream media (no fans of George Bush) after the election showed that recounting by the standards proposed by Gore in the counties contested by Gore would still have resulted in a Bush victory. Ironically, it does appear that if the entire state had been recounted (which Gore opposed), but according to the standards advocated by the Bush camp (which Gore also opposed), Gore probably would have won Florida and the election.

Now, if he wanted an example of a coup d'etat in an American presidential election, Moyers should have pointed to the election of 1876 between Samuel J. Tilden (D-NY) and Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH). That was a coup worthy of the name.