Finding a conservative instinct in a “conservative” female writer is near impossible. Kathleen Parker, the yin to neoconservative David Brooks’ yang, zeros in on the essence of State Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican vying with Attorney General Martha Coakley to fill Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.
The second most important thing to Parker, as noted in her column about the candidate who is fast gaining on the Coakley character, is that, “He’s a Mr. Mom to his busy wife, a Boston TV news reporter.” Like most “conservative” women, Parker makes the candidate’s feminist and family bona fides front-and-center.
But we’re not here discussing the mediocrity of Parker’s saccharine sweet, gender-specific, unremarkable prose, but the banality of the “JFK Republican,” Scott Brown. Basically Brown likes senseless war more than futile welfare.
Brown’s wishy-washy platform notwithstanding, you don’t need CNN to tell you that, “A GOP victory in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts could give Senate Republicans enough votes to block Obama’s health care plan. It also could shatter assumptions about the competitiveness of politics in the progressive Northeast.”
Brown has opened up a lead of 4 percentage points.
According to the Suffolk/7 News survey, Brown is grabbing 65 percent of independent voters, with three in 10 pulling for Coakley. And 17 percent of Democrats questioned said they’re supporting Brown.
If Brown pulls an upset and defeats Coakley, the Democrats will lose their 60-seat filibuster-proof coalition in the Senate. The shift could threaten the party’s priorities on health care and a range of other issues.
Brown’s election could mean the defeat of Obama’s healthcare bill, and that’s a good thing.
Otherwise, it’s all more musical chairs between the mamzers.
Update I (Jan. 18): If he wins, and it looks like he will, Brown will be on the next flight to DC to cast a vote in the Senate to kill the bill. As I understand it, Brown does not need to await confirmation to vote. His vote will be perfectly legal. If Democrats pull any procedural mischief, there will be riots.
The most liberal, Democrat-favoring state in the country—I believe Massachusetts has not elected a Republican to the Senate since the late 1970s—is rejecting Obama’s policies, or at least some of them.
This is a turning point in current Democrat-Republican dispensation. It’s a serious blow to blowhard Barack and a kick in the pants to Ted Kennedy, his “legacy” and possy. Some overall gains for liberty may result, although homeostasis within the duopoly will ultimately be restored.
Remember, “The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one entity to the other.”
Update II (Jan. 19): Not a peep from the media about this gentleman. Thanks to Myron for introducing Joe Kennedy, an independent candidate.
I skimmed his short platform. Kennedy’s a patriot. A tad weak on immigration, as he dares to speak only of the illegal kind, and cleaves to the, “We are a nation of immigrants” mantra. Still, Kennedy is better than most any establishment Republican.
Update III: Michelle Malkin clobbers David Frum in a post on Brown: “Brown has run on the core Tea Party issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and a strong national defense, while appealing to a broader swath of voters by emphasizing integrity, independence, and willingness to stand up to machine politics.” Read the complete post for the Frum bits.
Update IV: From Salon’s Joan Walsh, who has the aura of a wound-up, puritanical Martha Coakley, to Brother Eugene Robinson of the WaPo; to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the pretty, empty-headed Norah O’Donnell—the malpracticing media seems intractably unwilling to apply analytical acid to what’s unfolding in Massachusetts.
In Obama’s election, the Left saw a heavenly celestial alignment of the political stars. The media had been blessed at last with a son. “For Unto Us A Son is Born,” blah, blah. In the near dethroning of a Democrat in the liberal miasma that is Massachusetts, the ponces above see only logistical and tactical missteps.
The latest from Fox News: “Republican Scott Brown has taken the early lead in the Massachusetts special election, an unexpectedly competitive contest that could have significant implications for President Obama’s agenda in Washington.”
Update V: BROWN HAS WON. Associated Press:
In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.
Coakley has conceded.
Update VI: Want proof that Olby is bonkers? Here is what the MSNBC host said of the center-right, senator elect from Massachusetts:
“In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.’
— Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s Countdown, in a virulent rant against the Massachusetts candidate”
Michele Malkin: “… there are more long faces at MSNBC than at an aardvark convention.”
Here’s an image courtesy of Chris Matthews PR:
Update VII: Joan Walsh pleads, under the guise of an impartial postmortem: “this is a referendum on Coakley’s campaign, not on President Obama (thought I’ll get to him later.) She blew it … Coakley didn’t lose because of doubts about the health care reform bill…”
That’s settled, then. If Dems run good campaigns, they should be alright.
Walsh’s woman’s wiles tell her that this Republican victory in Massachusetts, achieved because the candidate rode a populist, tea-bag wave, has nothing to do with Democratic overreach. “In fact,” she assures her readers, “the problem has been under-reaching, and failing to deliver on campaign promises. But it’s going to take a lot of work on Obama’s part to bring those two poles within his party together. Exactly a year after his inauguration, it’s time for Obama to lead.”
Blessed be the boobs for they have inherited the earth.
Note Walsh’s dark demands that “agendas” be delivered on by hook or by crook.
The winner, Brown, disagrees. Campaigning “from the Berkshires to Boston, from Springfield to Cape Cod,” the voters of the Commonwealth told him they did “not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people.”
Odd that. (Even odder was Brown’s smarmy allusions, in his victory speech, to playing basketball with the president. Did you get the impression that the Republicans’ golden boy was looking forward to hobnobbing in high places? That disturbed me. The liberals, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate his crass peddling of his daughters as “available.” Cheap and inappropriate, that’s for sure.)
Update VIII: A good summery of the diabolical options Dems have been weighing, vis-a-vis the health care bill, soon to be laid to rest (we hope).
Update IX (Jan. 20): I’m hanging at Salon for a bit. Sometimes one just has to experience, or endure, a full frontal of the stuff. You tend to forget how repulsive the beltway liberal really is. Another insight into the seismic dethroning of Dems in Massachusetts courtesy of the Salon scribblers: “Massachusetts is filled with sexist voters.”