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.