On Victory

Scott Brown is headed for D.C. Truly, his victory on Tuesday ranks as one of the greatest political upset victories of all time. With his admittance to the Senate, the GOP will now be able to stop the ridiculous Democratic healthcare reform bill from passing.

Ought Publius eat crow, given his earlier post declaring that the race was, in fact, a non-race? Sure. I was wrong. But I wouldn't dream of deleting my hopeless December rant. It stands as a tribute to the limits of healthy skepticism. Miracles happen after all.

I have come to admire many things about Scott Brown during this campaign. Granted, there is room for improvement. However, Brown ran the kind of campaign that I believe America has needed for years: it was honest, positive, energetic, and devoid of hyperbolic sniping (alas, on the last of these, Coakley was the dead opposite, what with her patently false "Scott-Brown-Hates-Women" ads). I believe he will be an effective and hard-working U.S. senator, and I look forward to seeing what he contributes.

As far as his conservative credentials go: he needs to ante up and oppose abortion flat out. On the greatest civil rights issue of our day, he is not entirely reliable. Yet his desire for healthcare worker conscience protections, and his opposition to partial birth abortion, are healthy signs. There is a moral compass present in Brown that we can work with. Supporting him while simultaneously holding him accountable is the right curse.

I will say this for Martha Coakley: had she so desired, she could have stomped her feet and demanded copious recounts in light of her defeat. Instead, she took the high road (finally) and conceded when it became mathematically impossible for her to pull ahead. Still, her campaign is destined to go down as one of the most lethargic, lame election bids in history. Her defeat can rightfully be attributed to both a general lack of excitement amongst the Democratic base and a massive surge of pro-Brown energy in the suburbs. While the vapid, brainwashed masses of densely-populated Newton, Wellesley, Cambridge, and Brookline probably turned out for Coakley, it was the mass of commoners across the rest of the state that put Brown over the top.

The common man hath spoken. Obamacare has been repudiated, honesty and integrity on the campaign trail has been rewarded, and the liberal element in American politics has been made to look arrogant, out of touch, and unpopular. Obama has begun his post-defeat two-stepping, but it's all for naught. Good luck to Senator Brown as he takes his place in the higher chamber.

P.S. Glenn Beck's blistering attack on Scott Brown is frown-worthy. Brown's joke about his daughters' "availability" was innocent/harmless. Ayla Brown thought so, at least. Though I appreciate a decent amount of Beck's material by and large, I disagree with him here.

Obama's Last-Minute Trip to Boston

Again, I return to the subject of the pending Massachusetts election. At this point it has become a national story. The intensity was ratcheted up today by President Obama's last-minute, emergency trip to Boston, where he stumped for Coakley after spending a couple of weeks saying that he had no plans to do so.

Obama's visit is indicative of the Democrat's utter terror at the prospect of losing. Earlier this week, one poll showed that Brown was not only alive and well, but leading the race. This made Coakley's shy, non-campaigning, and her increasingly negative tone, seem ever more inappropriate; you can't project complacency and arrogance when you're losing. Hence Obama came to invigorate her lackluster campaign with some liberal, hope-and-change magic.

Needless to say, the president is worried about Brown's ability to kill the healthcare reform bill that is currently being rammed down our throats. It's highly unlikely that he would have flown to Massachusetts if the bill was already a done deal. Obama's visit is yet another example of his White House's constant "campaign mode" method of dealing with public policy challenges.

If Brown wins, Obama will have spent political capital on a high-profile, losing battle. Surely, a Brown victory will be seen as a repudiation of Obama's presidency. This is Massachusetts. It is the most liberal state in the union. A Republican victory here would be a clear sign that liberalism is not as embraced in America as its proponents want everyone to think.

P.S.- Is it not delightful that the vile blob of uselessness known as Representative Barney Frank (D-Newton) is already trying to distance the Democratic establishment from Coakley, should she lose?

P.S.S.- Senator Chuck Schumer is an asshole. His crude, politically-irrelevant cutdown of Scott Brown leaves me unable to call him anything else.

Sticks and Stones: Dems on the Ropes

Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh! The Democrats in Massachusetts, collectively reeling at the horror of a potential Scott Brown victory in the January 19 senatorial election, have resorted to childish taunting maneuvers. According to today's Boston Herald, they are (believe it or not) making some kind of snide insinuation that Sarah Palin ought to endorse Scott Brown, and that somehow, this would help there cause, because no one likes Sarah Palin.

I am not exactly sure what is being said, in this case. When a whiny child is wrong about something and knows it, he will often grope for oblique, immature, illogical quips that he can use to annoy and insult others for his own gratification. This DNC press secretary is following suit. Can't think of anything worthwhile or original to say? Attack Bush and Cheney. Still can't think of anything? Attack Sarah Palin (who, by the way, is being hit with major new allegations of stupidity and incompetence; perhaps a review of this forthcoming book is in order).

Ultimately, the DNC's sniping illustrates that the Democratic Party is (pardon me) scared utterly shitless of Scott Brown. Senators Kennedy and Kerry, along with Congressmen Delahunt and Capuano, traditionally ignored their marginal Republican challengers, running non-campaigns that yield 70-30 victories. Not this time. Coakley's mousy, silent bid for the Senate has backfired. You can't ignore a guy who has made as huge an impression as Brown; he raised nearly a million dollars in one day!

Will he win? I don't know. I believe that any prediction I make would be a 50-50 guess. In an earlier post, I aired my criticisms of both Brown and the race in general, and believed the situation looked dim. It's still not a lock, by any means. The left-wing machine in Massachusetts is quite powerful.

However, while I still have reservations about Brown's stance on crucial issues, he is the only choice for those of us who are looking for leadership and common sense instead of left-wing demagoguery. The longer his dogged, honest campaign has run, the more I've come to like his style.

Liar of the Week: U.S. Senator Paul Kirk

Ah, the pie crust promise: easily made, easily broken. After pledging not to endorse anyone in the race for the open Massachusetts senate seat, interim-Senator Paul Kirk has gone ahead and endorsed Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Mission accomplished: talk a good game to your constituents, make them think that you are going to stay above the partisan fray, and then go back on your word the second that people aren't paying attention (after all, Kirk is hardly a household name, and has kept a low profile in the Upper House; his endorsement's effectiveness does not trouble me, only the fact that he made it at all).

After all the cornball moralizing that the Democrats have engaged in for themselves and their annointed one Obama, with their gag-worthy "hope and change" and (my personal favorite) their "politics of transformation", it's reassuring to remember that they don't live up to one single blessed word of it. They are liars, and in this particular case, Paul Kirk is a liar. He has explicitly broken a promise made to the people of Massachusetts.

How come all of these educated adults with law degrees have the gall to say one thing, do another, and expect us not to care? Because we let them get away with it by re-electing them, by remaining ignorant of what they are actually doing, and by failing to hold them accountable.

He's far from perfect, but State Senator Scott Brown is looking like a better and better candidate these days (and a more viable one, at that). The complacent, fat-cat Massachusetts Democratic Party treats the people of our state like we're stupid. Let's prove to them that we know when we've been lied to.

Sudden Democratic Urges

Today's Boston Globe offers a depressing little tidbit about the current race for Ted Kennedy's open U.S. senate seat. It seems Martha Coakley, who is suddenly adamant that Massachusetts residents be treated to the full democratic process, refuses to debate Republican candidate Scott Brown unless third-party Libertarian candidate Joseph L. Kennedy (no relation to those Kennedys) is included.

Here we have naked political strategizing disguised as populist insistence on fairness. Coakley says, "I'm a Democrat, we live in a democracy, and this is one of the treasures that we have...If people can get the votes and get the support, they're allowed to get their message out to voters. ... He has done what Massachusetts says he needs to to be on the ballot here. In that sense he puts himself out as a candidate.''

Do not be fooled by this stammering extollment of the virtues of the democratic process. Magnanimous Martha is simply trying to split the Tax Day Tea Party crowd away from Brown, as Kennedy will easily siphon their votes away. By insisting on Libertarian involvement in the debates, she can turn this into a 70-15-15 race, rather than a 70-30 one.

Technically, there is nothing illegal or unethical about any of this. Nor does it really matter. It is, however, laughably insincere and (to those who follow local politics) somewhat aggravating.

The Democratic Party of Massachusetts is the party that refused to let the gay marriage issue be decided by popular vote, dictating through legislation that legally enshrined gay marriage is the law of the land. It is the party that recently has seen quite a few of its members (including former House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi and State Senator Diane Wilkerson) tossed out onto their butts due to abuses of power and ethics violations. It is the party that hands out high-paying government jobs to its friends and supporters.

Yet now, it is the party telling us to consider our voting options, in the name of fairness and democracy! I wish that the lefties had been as accomodating when it was time to give gay marriage a popular referendum.

The Senate Snooze-Fest

The Boston Globe, in an article surprisingly devoid of left-wing cheerleading, has outlined the opposing campaign strategies of yesterday's Massachusetts senate primary winners. The differences between State Senator Scott Brown (R-Wrentham, MA) and Attorney General Martha Coakley (D-Pittsfield, MA) are not surprising.

He is a true Massachusetts Republican, a trumpeter of financial responsibility, an opponent of socialized medicine, with liberal values akin to the umpteen other Democrats sitting on Beacon Hill.

She is a typical feminist liberal, the kind of person despised by the average Texan, so brazen in her socially progressive agenda that she initially refused to support the Senate's current health insurance reform bill because, apparently, it doesn't provide unfettered abortion access.

The Globe sums it up thusly: Brown is going to "go after" Coakley, and seek to expose her past foibles as Attorney General. Coakley is going to simply ignore Brown.

How will it end? With a handful of diverting headlines, a low turnout, and a victory for Coakley. Her ascension is pre-ordained. The party bosses, union leaders, and whiny activist groups will stump for any idiot who arrays himself (sorry, herself) with the blue jackass of the Democratic Party. It helps that Coakley is the consumate politician: quiet, cool, unemotional. Her primary campaign largely consisted of cautious, poll-supported posturing. She's as much a master of positioning herself as President Obama (only she has none of his public speaking chops).

I predict that this is going to be one of the most bland, boring political excursions the state has seen since...well, 2006, when Deval Patrick handily beat up on poor Kerry "Muffy" Healey. (More on Deval's doomed re-election bid later. I suspect he will lose, but he is losing strictly due to incomprehensible stupidity, and not misdirected party allegiance).

There is no chance for Brown. He cannot excite the conservative base of Massachusetts, should such a thing exist. Coakley's machine, which was revving even while Teddy was still warm on his deathbed, is unstoppable.

Even if the fiscally minded Republicans who own Financial District counting houses show up to vote, the Christians, so central to every GOP victory, likely will not. You can only cheat a man so many times before he refuses to play. Brown's centerfold photoshoot and his mousy support for abortion are telltale signs of his inevitable failure to live up to Republican ideals, and the grassroots right won't bother mustering any momentum for him. He smells, feels, and looks like the kind of Republican who acts pro-life during the campaign season and then laughs at the Evangelicals behind closed doors, once they've inked their ballots.

Granted, I hope I am wrong. The lesser of many evils is always my preference. I will vote for Brown.

Regardless of my hopes, we are left with a probable Democratic victory. Massachusetts seems incapable of thinking/reasoning/debating its way out of the status quo. These pre-programmed elections, in which watered-down, underfunded Republicans lose to wealthy, well-connected Democrats, will continue on and on. Turnout will stagnate further, as even liberals stop showing up to vote. When you've clinched it, why waste the gas?

Politics in Massachusetts remain a boring, frustrating spectator sport. The lack of competition and realistic alternatives to the liberal status quo have left us in the doldrums. Hopefully, we'll wake up before our state marches away into national irrelevancy.