I don’t know what Scott Brown’s religion is. Seven weeks ago, I didn’t know anything at all about Scott Brown. But his amazing victory in yesterday’s special election for the U.S. Senate was about as unlikely as a Protestant being elected Pope. That Fred Grandy line neatly summarizes the political upheaval that has occurred not only in Massachusetts, but in our country.
Going into 2010, President Barack Obama, though battered, still bid fair to be able to ram through his signature health care bill--and achieve the takeover of 1/6 of the U.S. economy. Add health care to his takeover of banking, home mortgages, college loans, major U.S. auto companies, and you would have a sea change in America’s constitutional order.
With Martha Coakley’s defeat, President Obama is now an ex-god. Last year, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas said Obama hovered over Normandy and the 65th anniversary celebrations of D-Day “like a sort of god.” No more.
This will actually be good for Barack Obama. From now on, he will have to take account of Americans’ reasonable objections to his agenda. This will force him to pay attention to critics. Under our system, Presidents propose, but Congress disposes. And Congress is going to be emboldened to ask more questions from now on.
President Obama’s record for intervening in statewide political races is now 0 and 3. He campaigned hard for Virginia’s Creigh Deeds last fall. Bob McDonnell crushed him. Obama appeared three times for New Jersey’s Gov. Jon Corzine. Another loser.
And now we have Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley. All three lost badly. In early December, Coakley was 30 points ahead in some polls. That Senate seat was described in the media as “the Kennedy seat.” But poor Patrick Kennedy kept trying to give it to “Marcia” Coakley. That was but one of a hundred gaffes.
Scott Brown caught the public mood when he told the unctious David Gergen: “With all due respect, it’s not ‘the Kennedy seat’ or the Democrats’ seat; it’s the people’s seat.” That one-liner turned the debate and the race around.
House and Senate leaders have been telling worried incumbents they can afford to walk the plank on health care. If their constituents revolt, President Obama himself will come to their districts and campaign for them.
With Coakley losing in Massachusetts, hundreds of skittish candidates are going to ask themselves: Do I really want Barack Obama campaigning for me? If all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Coakley together again, how can I survive?
Now, ObamaCare itself is in doubt. Hundreds of “progressives” in public offices all over America must be quaking. They’re already afraid to call themselves liberals. What if the American people have gotten wise to progressive, too? And if ObamaCare can rally a strong enough opposition in Massachusetts--where a Republican has not been elected to the U.S. Senate since Edward Brooke in 1972--where will it be a winning issue?
Scott Brown was smart to campaign against civilian trials for terrorists. This issue clearly united Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. The Obama administration’s decision to give the rights of American criminal defendants to foreign enemy combatants is one of the worst decisions in American history. It cannot be defended. New England patriots--like patriots everywhere--recoil at the very idea.
Mary Matalin says when Mike Tyson knocks you out, your sense of taste is different. This morning, politics tastes different. Americans are coming together around some common-sense propositions.
Massachusetts voters yesterday firmly rejected the ugly politics of the liberal attack machine. That machine put out one of the worst campaign fliers in history. That flier falsely accused Scott Brown of wanting to turn away from the Bay State’s Emergency Rooms the 1736 victims of rape.
Clearly, this vicious, last-minute tactic backfired. It probably only served to remind people that with liberals controlling all aspects of government in Massachusetts, it is a sad commentary that there should still be 1736 rape victims.
Further, Coakley’s infamous comment that perhaps Catholics, and others of conscience, should not work in Emergency Rooms called to mind the old “No Irish Need Apply” signs that once disgraced Massachusetts’ factories and mills. The lady has a tin ear.
If Coakley had won, she would have supplied a gaffe-a-day to conservative blogs and cartoonists. When she called Red Sox hero Curt Schilling a Yankees fan, she showed how out-of-touch she was with the man--and woman--in the streets of the old Bay State. The bloody sock Curt Schilling wore as he hurled to victory in the World Series is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Coakley’s despicable campaign should be entered in the political Hall of Shame.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member