All politics are local, and there were a lot of local aspects to last night’s near miraculous sea change in Massachusetts. Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate election sends a number of messages to Washington, and it is far more nuanced than “the 41st vote against healthcare.” That is not to say his position as the breaker of the supermajority is not important. Scott Brown may have saved this country from wide spread blood in the streets (Of course, if Reid, Pelosi and company ignore this message and charge ahead, anythingl is still possible.)
There are a number of bits in this election that the media has glossed over, or ignored. These bits I think need to be looked at, because this election is probably going to be a precedent for what happens in the fall. Here are a few things from my local observer’s position.
The electorate is tired. Barack Obama ran on a platform of change, then let the characters in Washington run the government in a “hyper-same” way. People wanted less corruption, less spending, less debt, more accountability, more bi-partisanship, and more effectiveness. What we got was more corruption, more spending, more debt (!), less accountability, NO bi-partisanship, and less effectiveness. The electorate saw it within weeks of the inauguration, and the Dems are still misreading the attitude of the public.
One party rule is bad for this country. This was the first time in my lifetime that a viable challenge to a Democrat for national office appeared in Massachusetts. The democratic party controls every aspect of government in this state. My guess is, Scott Brown probably got a much larger margin of the vote, and made the election effectively “cheat proof.” There is NO DOUBT that there was cheating yesterday, and it wasn’t by the Brown campaign. We need a loyal opposition for the protection of the republic. The PEOPLE and not any outside organization understood this and rose to the occasion.
The Democratic party has a disdain for the citizens of the United States. You won’t hear this in the MSM, but that’s the truth. Martha Coakley, as a mouthpiece for the party, let slip a few gaffes that revealed the attitude of party insiders. Given this is Massachusetts, you can count on the fact that this information also reflected party leadership in Washington. She commented off hand that she didn’t need to shake hands in the cold because she knew certain well connected political operatives who could get her the election. In a slip, Coakley articulated what the pols in Washington, and in the MSM have been saying all along: “We don’t need the little people, we know what’s best. We make the decisions and you go along and play nice.” Here in Massachusetts it really was the last straw.
The Democratic Party believes that it’s above your God given and Constitutional rights. On Thursday of last week Martha Coakley slipped and said “you can have your religious freedom, but you shouldn’t be working in an emergency room.” Once again, she articulated what many Americans have been sensing. The Democratic-Educational-Media complex doesn’t take seriously the rights given to us in the founding documents of the United States. They believe they can dole them out when and where they see fit. Her comment left many who probably would have voted for her in shock. She actually said that a person who was a devout Catholic could not work in (what she hoped would one day be) a state run emergency room. In other words, you can have your rights, but you may have to give up your job. Welcome to AMERIKA.
Socialism doesn’t sell, even in Massachusetts. We may have forgotten a lot about the founding of this country, but it was founded here. The anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill is a holiday here, and you can’t go too far in any direction without running into a plaque, monument or statue dedicated to our brave ancestors who fought and died for freedom. I am a descendant of a Revolutionary War general, and there are a lot of us up here. We might be left of center on some things, but we are not European style Social Democrats. Last year Massachusetts came close to eliminating its income tax in a public referendum (see one party rule above). The lamp of liberty, though dim, still burns here.
Scott Brown is a unique candidate for Massachusetts. If this election had happened in the South or the Midwest, Scott Brown would have not gotten the election. He would not have “sold in Peoria” as they say. He refused to make abortion an issue in the campaign (although he is not pro-Life). His voting record is really centrist. Compared to Coakley and the machine in Boston, he seems wildly conservative, but he is not. All of Olbermann’s attacks seem really strange, because this guy is not an idealogue. He really is a mainstream, but average (well I guess he does look like a movie star) kind of character. When he got the chance (and he had many) to turn negative and attack Coakley, he did not. He kept it positive, worked hard, and kept on his message. It resonated.
Don’t ignore the Tea Party. The best line from the campaign: “We don’t want a Tea Party in Massachusetts.” Duh!
Tea Partiers, and their spirit, helped infuse the Brown campaign with life. There were homemade signs and hundreds of volunteers who made this a guerilla campaign. The Democrats and their astroturfing couldn’t compete. The longer the White House, the Congress, and the Main Stream Media ignore the Tea Party, the worse it will be for the Dems. They didn’t see Scott Brown coming, and they won’t see the revolution that is brewing. Saul Alinsky said to ridicule and marginalize your opponent. More and more that tactic is backfiring–because you can’t marginalize the majority and the center of the American people. To do so is overt hard tyranny. The country is awake and on alert, and I think the slippery slope to tyranny has finally gotten bumpy.
