David A. Siegel Quotes
I doubt if there will ever be another Republican president in my lifetime.
Siegel, David A. Interview. The Huffington Post, 9 Nov. 2012.
The main source of Republican votes was Anglo White males. However, the demographics of the nation had been changing for a few decades where the non-Whites are the fastest growing demographic subgroup. The projection was clearly that Anglo Whites would cease to be the majority in the coming years and each year they became slightly smaller. This caused many of the Republican politicians to redouble their efforts to appeal (sometimes pander) to non-Anglo White males in order to gain a majority. However, many of the positions that appealed to White Males—like immigration control and deportation of "illegals"—often offended many of the new growing demographic groups who voted in larger numbers against the Republicans. The money and manpower that was needed to try and produce a slim majority gave fewer and fewer resources to those Republicans who wanted to campaign heavily with the current minorities and to be majorities in order to get an even higher percentage to non-Anglo White Males. So each year Republicans were losing more and more ground with the very groups that were becoming a larger and larger voting bloc. Hence the "Death Spiral".
Al Gore had substantially won the popular vote but needed Florida to win the electoral vote. There had been a series of vote counting irregularities with many people being denied the right to vote to the point that no one was sure who had won Florida. The election moved from the ballot box to the courts and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that there should be some recounts in areas where Bush had supposedly won. The Bush forces and the Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court where the judges all reversed their traditional positions to support the party who had nominated them. Liberals who usually voted to have the Federal government override the states, voted for Florida to be upheld. Conservatives who usually supported the right of the States to decide such things without Federal Interference, voted to overturn the State Supreme Court. There were 5 Republicans and 6 Democrats and George W. Bush won the election by one judge’s vote.
This was the result of Gerrymandering over the last decade where the Republicans outmaneuvered the Democrats in enough states so that they could control the House even of the Democrats had a large majority of the votes for congress members. See {632784} for an explanation of Gerrymandering technique.
David Alan Siegel is an American businessman who founded Westgate Resorts Ltd, a Florida-based timeshare resort firm where he serves as president and chief executive officer. He has nine biological children and two adopted children. Siegel is CEO of CFI Resorts Management Inc. and Central Florida Investments Inc. and his other businesses include real estate, construction, hotel and apartment management, travel services, insurance, transportation, and retail.