The People Take Back Ted Kennedy's Seat

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Martha Coakley was supposed to be carried to her coronation on a sedan chair borne by obedient Massachusetts union goons. After all, she was the chosen one in a one party state. She shouldn’t even have to stand for election. And until the last couple of weeks, she scarcely bothered to campaign. She even took a week-long vacation in the middle of a six week campaign, just to let the people of Massachusetts know just how much she took them for granted. Starting Wednesday, she was supposed to take her place on the Kennedy throne for the next 4 or 5 decades. She could get drunk, get fat, get away with murder, embark on a second career as a serial adulterer and, as long as she waddled along in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade every year, her future was secure. Martha Coakley was the anointed one, selected to ascend to what the Massachusetts elite and the mainstream news media still call “Ted Kennedy’s seat.”

It didn’t work out quite that way. The first warning sign came from Rasmussen Reports, which found that her 30 point lead in the polls just weeks earlier had shriveled to single digits. The Democrats sprang into action, by criticizing the pollster for his conservative bias. In the final week, Republican State Senator Scott Brown swept ahead and cruised to a comfortable victory.

This wasn’t the anniversary present that Barack Obama had wished for. On his front step, on the morning that ended his first year in office, the Washington Post’s banner headlines announced that a Republican had beaten the Democratic candidate, whom he had campaigned for, in that most Democrat of states. He who must not be middle named is on a bit of a losing streak. In recent months he has campaigned for three Democrats trying to preserve their party’s place in power. And two of those states were as Democratic as they come, New Jersey and Massachusetts. He lost all three. When you throw in his pitch for Chicago’s Olympic bid and his plea for a binding treaty in Copenhagen to impose carbon emission restrictions, he’s 0 for 5.

Most importantly for Obama, the central issue in the Massachusetts campaign was Obamacare. And the candidate who made opposition to Obamacare his theme won a most unlikely race.

Republicans should not become cocky or complacent. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Harry Reid (D-NV) and their henchmen have given the electorate every reason to vote against Democrats. But so far, the Republicans have not really made a case for anyone to vote for them. It’s up to the Republicans now to give the electorate something to vote for.

Now would be a good time to start work on a new Contract with America. Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994 by making all congressional races national. A good starting point would be to promise that they would never hold public auctions for votes. During the Senate debate over Harry Reid’s version of Obamacare, several senators held out for special goodies. Harry Reid announced that he had purchased Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu’s vote for $100 million. Not so said Landrieu. She doesn’t come that cheap. The actual total was $300 million. Ben Nelson was a cheaper whore. He was bought for $100 million. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Connecticut’s Christopher Dodd also secured goodies for their votes. The whole process nauseated Americans who not only didn’t like the sausage making process, but didn’t like the sausage either.

And when the Senate went into conference with the House of Representatives, labor unions were able to get themselves excused from one of the more onerous provisions, a heavy tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans. And not only that, they got a reverse grandfather clause attached that excused future union members from the tax, arming the unions with another bludgeon to herd more workers onto their membership rolls.

And this is just what we were able to learn in spite of a news blackout that contradicted promises of transparency made by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership in the last two elections.

If Republicans were to start their 2010 Contract with America with a promise that such behavior will not occur on their watch, they’d be off to a good start.