Brown Out
What Will Brown Do For Us?
Great Scott!
The World Turned Upsidebrown
Warp Speed Ahead, Scotty
Scott DOES Know
And the grotesquiest:
Dems Can't Wipe the Brown
"(R-MA)"
That combination of characters is simply foreign to me. Republican from Massachusetts. I never thought it possible. My entire 25 year life, I've had two Democrats representing me in the Senate. And I'd always presumed that it would always be the case. I never dreamed that this FACT would ever be challenged, let alone changed. The sky is now red (blue to red, get it?), water is now dry, fire is now cool.
One more sentimental paragraph before we break into sterile political reality. I was so thrilled to vote yesterday. Because it mattered. It mattered here in The Commonwealth, and it mattered across the country. It was a first for a young Massachusetter, who's accustomed to his deep blue state. Win or lose, the vote that I recorded in the 3rd cubicle on the left at the Balch School Gym in Norwood was enabled, virile, powerful. The country felt my vote today, and not simply because my man won (another first).
Scott Brown vs. Martha Coakley was a bit of a Perfect Storm scenario. Coakley was a forgettable candidate. Her campaign was presuming, dissociative, unnoticeable and then exceedingly desperate. I'll summarize her campaign strategy. "I'm Martha Coakley, I'm a Democrat, I'm running for Senator." The campaign didn't even ask you to vote for her. It just assumed you would because of the D next to her name.
I mean, this woman was just on another planet from the average voter.
Compared to:
Magnificently quaint. Even the echoing, homemade acoustics of the commercial make you FEEL like you're in the livingroom with them. It can be dismissed as political BS, but BS works!
Scott Brown was relatable, likable, slick yet simple. It was a good incumbent's campaign. They used his obscurity to his advantage, turning him into a newcomer, the outsider, the reformer. You do an image search for "Scott Brown" on Google, and in the first 3 pages, there's 1 picture of him. The rest are of a Scottish soccer player.
Coakley's poor campaign, Scott Brown's smoothness are what pushed Brown over the top in a close race. But what made it close was the backlash against the Democrats in Washington.
Some conservative pundits on Fox News were thrilled last night. They saw this as a booming anti-Barack voice from the heart of the leftwing's motherland. And it should be mentioned that Massachusetts hasn't had a Republican Senator since the 70's. Barack won Massachusetts by a whopping 25.8%. 61.8% of Massachusetters voted for Barack little more than a year ago. Democrats outnumber Republicans 3.5:1 here.
Massachusetts doesn't hate Barack. And I think it's too early to suggest that America wants somebody besides Barack in the driver's seat. And they seem to be fine with Pelosi n' pals being the backseat drivers. But Americans want to put a speed limit on this car. And that's what this election effectively does.
If you laughed at this shirt, you're a major nerd
The Democrats have railroaded about 3 years worth of ultraliberal legislation through Congress. But the US Government wasn't built for speed. Or comfort. Or motorboating. It was built to be slow, cautious, difficult to change. The Founders studied the descent of the Roman Republic into tyranny, and learned from those mistakes. They therefore constructed a system with checks and balances.
Change is good, but our system is meant to keep change at a snail's pace. New bills need to be examined, for longer than 10 minutes.
Slow and steady wins the race. Didn't the Democrats read the tortoise and the hare?
When you start messing around with healthcare, the people get nervous. They want to know what's going on. The Democrats failed to let us in on their designs. They just wanted it passed, and passed ASAP, whatever 'it' was. Just like they shoved their stimulus packages through.
The election of Scott Brown is an indictment on the Democrats' stranglehold in Washington, but not nearly a conviction. And this is Massachusetts we're talking about here. The home of MIT, Harvard, BC, BU, Northeastern, etc. These are smart people who have college+ education and put their kids in private high schools. These people have white collar jobs, drive hybrids, wear suits, and vote for Barack Obama. These are smart, educated people. These aren't the "Tea-Baggers" that Democrats prefer to demean and dismiss as ignorant instead of addressing their questions.
If Massachusetts wants Barack to slow down, what speed limit might the rest of the country want to implement?
"Wake Up Call" will be the buzzphrase of the cable news pundit from now until November. And this is clearly a call for Democrats to rise and shine. But is that a good thing for conservatives?
Of course I'm happy that it's 59 to 41 in the Senate. I'm happy that the Democrats might move back toward the middle. And that's great for the here and now. But a parable:
A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, "Oh how wonderful." But a Zen master who lives in the village says, "We shall see." The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, "Oh how awful." The Zen master says, "We shall see." The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go fight. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, "Oh, how wonderful."
The Zen master says, "We shall see."
What if we've woken up the Democrats, so they slow down their socialisms, and they maintain their solid majority in the 2010 elections? I guess so long as they're closer to the middle with their policies, it isn't so bad.
For conservatives out there, celebrate but don't rejoice. This isn't the "beginning of the end" for Barack or his disciples. It's certainly the end of the beginning, but we shouldn't revel much in having only 41 Senators in Washington.
For liberals out there, get over it. You guys are still driving, and still have the map. Is it really so much to ask that you consult us when deciding when to stop to use the bathroom? Some anonymous liberal reactions I've observed so far:
"Voting for Scott Brown is something I cannot understand when so much for the common man is riding on him losing this election."
The fact that liberals fail to grasp why we voted for Brown is precisely why we voted for Brown. Liberals just don't get us, they get the New York Times.
"That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held by a Republican who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects; opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions; and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country."
So maybe the same population that voted for Kennedy 8 times, doesn't much mind water-boarding terrorists, don't give two shits about carbon emissions (who has ever won or lost an election on carbon emissions?), and are fine with illegal immigrants remaining illegal immigrants. Maybe the People of the Commonwealth care more about their taxes, their jobs, and their healthcare.
"Yup, I am moving to Brazil."
Really? Because you can no longer ram bills through the Senate no questions asked, you're going to move out? WOW! Spoiled!
"Goddamn it, Massachusettes. Thanks a frigging lot."
Hasn't Massachusetts done enough for the left? Certainly disproportionate to its population it has. Ted Kennedy, JFK, RFK, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, Barney Frank, et cetera, et cetera.
"I think the dems need to make sure they're organized, more than they need to change course."
Now this is music to my ears. Don't change policies, try to change campaign strategies. Please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top!
While Coakley's pitiful campaign was ultimately why she lost the close race, it wouldn't have been close if not for thousands of disgruntled moderates. Barack's liberal agenda makes them anxious. We don't know what the liberals are actually doing, but it's coming at us at 400 MPH. That's alarming.
I'll compare this race to baseball. Coakley's bullpen ultimately cost her the game, but a better offense and starting pitching performance wouldn't have given a bad bullpen the chance to blow a 30 point lead.
I'll compare it to the 4th & 2 play the Patriots had against the Colts. While Belichick's decision to go for it on 4th & 2 arguably decided the game, the Patriots' poor performance in the Red Zone on previous drives would have never let this one play affect the outcome.
I'll end this post with a short bit about Scott Brown's future role in the Republican Party. Kid's got potential. If politics were baseball, he's just been called up to the Majors, has a 96 MPH fastball, and a wicked slider. He's still just a prospect though. But he has done something no Republican has done since 1972. And he's gonna get lots of national publicity for it.
He's got an American Dream kind of family, one daughter is pre-med, the other a rising star in the singing world who also plays basketball in the ACC.
Thus far, he has the raw materials to be much more than a Senator. Now plenty of politicians with the same talents have come and gone in the past for both parties. But it's worth watching what Scott Brown does in the Senate.
There's a vacuum in the GOP. There's a groundswell of anti-liberal sentiment, but there's no heroes to get behind and vote for. There are loudmouthed figureheads (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh). Wise, respected statesmen (McCain). But there are no clear leaders. Not yet. Brown might someday be one of those leaders.
Brown for President in 2016?
1 comment:
good stuff rob
concur
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