printFinding 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.”
That’s if one of the grand ole party doesn’t decide to throw in with the BO crowd in order to get an unequal distribution of our tax dollars for their state.
And if Brown wins brace for yet more meshugas. The GOP will hitch its wagon to a new star, a groundless groundswell gets stoked by party planners, a few genuine liberals are bought up to sing harmonic hosannas, and Brown ends up covering Obama’s hit “Hope and Change”.
A Chorbn!
I think a Brown victory would be pivotal, but in an underlying, more critical area. Although his pro-war stance is very disturbing, his ability to pull off a “win,” IMO, would contribute to many more individuals in America becoming more libertarian, whether necessarily being intellectually conscious of it or not.
It would be “pivotal” in the sense of providing political “leverage” across the nation to other candidates (even current office-holders), who could then say, in essence, look at the change occurring in America when the most liberal state in the nation is elected to a seat previously occupied by probably the once most liberal Senator in the nation.
There is an underlying current among independent voters that, IMO, is a shift toward libertarian values.
Ron Paul says: “It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image.”
(http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul375.html)
(I guess there is no Israel in the Middle East.) (And I wonder whether we should have had the Marshall Plan to rebuild not only our friends in Europe but our enemies, Japan and Germany?)
He refers to Washington and Jefferson words against foreign entanglements and interventions. And yet he sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803. And Jefferson being devoutly anti-tyranny, we may wonder whether he would have weighed in on the side of the French Revolution had it still been ongoing, or failing, when he came to office. (I believe that he would have send military aid.)
So since we all presume to speak as to the thoughts of the founders, I would maintain that had they been alive today, they would not view themselves as libertarians, but moderately-strict constitutional – meaning that they would recognize that there are times when the Constitution could not foresee a particular event or national need.
There are a thousand hairs to split with candidates where we can impress ourselves with our brilliance and grasp of the issues, no matter how obscure. However, the ox is in the ditch. The only thing we need to know is are they for or against the Democrat horde. Lets save the country from becoming a modern day Juraisic Park first. Then we can start splitting political hairs.
There is one principled candidate in the 3 person race in Taxachusetts:
http://joekennedyforsenate.com/
EXCELLENT analysis of the sordid government-growing record of Scott Brown who supported Romney-care, Cap and Trade, teachers unions, and overriding local property tax limitations is found at:
http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/
If Brown wins, the House can accept the Senate health care bill as already passed, the Senate can end-run the filibuster, or get Brown/Snowe/Collins to be the 60th vote. The bill is such a mess that the Democrats may be secretly glad to have an excuse to let it die. In any case, Brown would only represent a victory for neoconservatism statism and only marginally postpone the inexorable march to big government.
The Brown race is the typical Republican nonsense that has gone on since Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, and numerous Bushes, Doles, Romneys, and McCains. “Give us Republicans POWER to stop those (eeek eeek) liberals!” And yet the American suckers keep on the road to financial Armageddon.
“What can Brown do for you?” – increase government!
I took Myron’s advice and checked out Joe Kennedy. Tossed a couple of bucks into the hat; it will help encourage him to run in the next race. He won’t win this one but it won’t matter anyway. The Mass. Attorney General or whoever does the affirmation and swearing in has already said he will not confirm the winner (if it is not a Democrat) until after the health care package passes the Senate. They will get it done anyway. We have to groom, support, assist the “New Young Libertarians” Rogue Republican’s are not going to cut it. The young Libertarians may have to do like Ron Paul and use the elephant’s cover but not sleep with him. Gary Johnson the ex-Republican but Libertarian governor of New Mexico is another that it is possible to encourage to return to the political arena. Who knows how many more are there? I hope Brown does win, simply because I want to see the Democrat machine wrecked, but the hope for the Constitution depends on better men and women than Republicans.
James, your comment that “the only thing we need to know is are they for or against the Democrat horde” appeals to a lot of voters and that is unfortunate. Voting against something will not bring about the change you seek. Why vote for Republicans running on slowing the rate of growth of the government? It will never result in the return of a principled, limited government. The Republicans can’t even seek to compromise on ideals, because they are only parroting the ideals of the Democrats, just at different volumes.
With elephants and donkeys tromping on our liberties and property, one feels like Poland with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia chomping over their next meal. Typically, one expects Democrats to be a bit worse on the pocketbook than Republicans but perhaps a little better on civil liberties. However, Martha Coakley is the Democrats’ version of John “torture memo” Yoo:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31413.html
http://online.wsj.com/…/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862. html
http://www.riehlworldview.com/…/the-details-coakley-amirault-woodward-and- souza.html
The Cheneys and Yoos are just zealots willing to shred civil liberties to “get” apparently GUILTY people but Martha Coakley gleefully shreds civil liberties to railroad the INNOCENT. Not only rightists but also libertarians and leftists are alarmed by her complete lack of ethics.
In comparison, Brown is merely an unprincipled statist hack of the Romney – Lindsey Graham variety. I’d probably still vote for Joe Kennedy given that there is actually a good person running against these two statists. Nevertheless, there will be more of a silver lining if Brown beats Coakley than if Brown defeated a less obnoxious democrat like Jim Webb (whom I supported over George Macaca Allen).
Still, in the long haul, we need politicians like Joe L (for libertarian) Kennedy and not hacks like Brown.
Joe Kennedy would have been the best choice,too bad he did not catch fire.
Brown is probably the best you can get out of Ma., at this time.
The next race peeps should focus on is the Tx. Gov. race
Debra Medina is a rock solid Constitution/Liberty candidate & I think she will pass the Myron test as a Ron Paul like candidate, check her out MP
http://www.medinafortexas.com/
She also got invited to the second debate & went from 4% to 12% in a week
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/01/our-story-on-the-inclusion-of.html
She cleaned the clocks of gov. good hair & ms. hyphenated in the fist debate, you can watch it here
http://www.texasdebates.org/
I could vote for Joe Kennedy in principle – he would be my first choice – but he cannot win this election. He should be encouraged and supported, but in any election I vote for the person who is closest to my ideals who also has a chance of winning. Otherwise, I feel, I could be helping a worse candidate into office. And yes, the Republicans and Democrats are 6 of one and a half dozen of the other in the aggregate, but the mix is different. In this kind of situation, not allowing either party total control should be the immediate goal. And we should cultivate candidates like Kennedy to the point where they have a chance at winning.
To Greenhell: Points well taken, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Getting a principled, limited government from Republicans is a tall order indeed. Getting it from the Democrats is impossible. Back during the depression my grandfather in Mississippi, who never voted for Roosevelt, warned that when control of the Democratic party moved to the northern states the country would go to hell. They did and it did.
As the saying goes: Today is the day in Massachusetts. Which martin or marion will take the nod today? It matters in the short run right now, but what of the long? I don’t know. I’ve long since given up on the GOP. I’d rather vote for my losers than the losers who keep winning. Is it futile to vote for the third party guy who tells the truth? I don’t think it’s ever futile to stand with the truth. The status quo is the real futility.
This just hasn’t been Olby’s week has it.
I also has some uneasy moments during Brown’s acceptance speech: (1) basketball with the Prez, (2) hawking his beautiful daughters, (3) too much joking around – to the point of looking unserious. After all, he is going to DC to overturn a tyranny, not go brie tasting!
And Olby turns my stomach – but it is really unfair to the aardvark community to compare them to him. I would bet that they are generally more intelligent than the average newscaster at MSNBC, and I believe that all of them are better at deciding from which end to eat and which end to … well, you get the idea.
Gee! I really hate to rain on anybody’s parade, but you’ll never elect a principled limited government. Voters might have rejected Obama’s Soviet-style health care program, but they still want the old-fashioned, glad-handing, free goodies for everyone, never mind who’s paying for it, American kind of socialism orignally sold to them in the 1930s. To abolish socialism and restore limited government, you’d need to restrict the franchise to white male property owners. That would require considerable force and violence. I don’t see it happening until our present government has collapsed of its own weight.
Olby was ranting that Scott Brown said it is not NATURAL for 2 women to have children, thus making him HOMOPHOBIC! Huh! Am I stupid? Did biology change? Can two women naturally have children. What a freaking idiot Olberman is.
Well, the so-called Swing Voters have been swinging back and forth against whichever party is in power as we slide down the fiscal toilet. So the Democrats rode the trend in 06 and 08 and now it is Scott Brown. The deck chairs on the Financial Titanic are being rearranged – but the sad part is that the statists beat the libertarian by 99:1. Coaklely was especially obnoxious and ran a bad campaign and the working class Catholics who voted for every Kennedy due to family loyalty (that goes back 100 years to Honey Fitz) abandoned her.
The fickle Swing Voters are exercising CROOK ROTATION – sort of a political version of crop rotation. They are worried about Obama printing a trillion phony dollars to Obamacare instead of spending the phony dollars on Medicare! Romneycare Brown will “save” Medicare! However, we are still sliding into a statist abyss.