GOP Won't Allow Franken to be Seated in Senate Until Contest is Decided

There was some talk that Harry Reid would allow Al Franken to be seated in the Senate based on incomplete results from the contest phase of the election. No way, say the GOP:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) threatened Friday to filibuster any attempt to seat Democratic Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken next week.

The newly minted National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman said he had not whipped votes in the GOP caucus, but added that he could not imagine any members defecting and seating Franken without a certificate of election.

Franken will not have that certificate as long as the election is challenged in the courts — a likely scenario, with Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) legal team already attacking the credibility of the recount process.

“This is a very, very serious matter,” Cornyn said. “I can assure you that there will be no way that people on our side of the aisle will agree to seat any senator without a valid certificate.”

Some have suggested that Franken could be seated provisionally, which would allow for any court challenges to play out and potentially change the outcome.

But since Minnesota state law won’t provide Franken a certificate of election with an election contest pending, seating Franken could be a risky and difficult proposition.

Minnesota may take awhile to sort that whole mess out. At this point Franken still leads, but there are so many irregularities in the voting I'm not sure we'll ever really know who won.

The sad thing is the voters of Minnesota couldn't figure out that Coleman was a significantly better candidate than Franken. If they end up with porn-writing comic Al, they deserve him.