Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category

After a year of private, closed door negotations and ignoring Republicans suggestions and solutions, and after the Democratic  majority in Congress couldn’t deliver on health care, Barack Obama has decided it’s time to talk to the Republicans.

Obama Invites GOP to “Bipartisan Health-Care Summit”
National Review

President Obama has invited Congressional Republicans to a half-day health-care summit, to be broadcast live from the Blair House later this month.

Here’s the kicker…

So I doubt even the most masterful of rhetorical performances from President Obama will change the prognosis of the bill — reconciliation or bust — but the very fact the White House is resorting to this strategem is a sign of just how few options they have left.

Tuesday’s election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to fill a Senate seat held by a Kennedy, in fact one of just two Kennedy’s, since 1953 has shaken the political foundations of Washington, the nation and most notably the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.  After all, the seat belonged to the people of Camelot.  It belonged to the Kennedys.  It belonged to the Democrats.  Or so they thought.

Ted Kennedy, the youngest of four Kennedy brothers and the one their father expected the least from, held that seat for forty-seven years, since his brother’s election to the Presidency.  In a sense, he had greatness thrust upon him.  Each of his older brothers had died tragically.  Older brother Joe died near the end of World War II.  Brothers Jack and Bobby were gunned down by assassins. 

This left Ted Kennedy to be the political leader of the family.  And while it was not what their father had originally intended, Ted Kennedy grew in stature in the United States Senate and was really the most effective Kennedy of his generation.

The scandal of Chappaquiddick and a primary challenge loss to Jimmy Carter ended Ted’s Presidential aspirations.  Hope held out for young John F. Kennedy, Jr. to perhaps follow in his father’s footsteps.  But in what some might call the Kennedy curse, his life was also cut short in yet another tragic accident.

Still, I don’t believe in a Kennedy curse.   They’re simply a large, energetic, passionate family.  Maybe that causes them to take risks.  Their tragedies and their triumphs have played out on the national and world stage. 

To some, they’re America’s royal family.  And face it; in terms of scandals they can give the House of Windsor a run for their money.

Many have termed the presence of the Kennedys in American politics as Camelot, the title of the Lerner and Lowe musical based on the legend of King Arthur.  Yet, Camelot, like the Kennedy curse, was a myth.

In the month after Jack Kennedy’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy called author T.H. White to Hyannis Port for an interview, it was there she said, ”

At night before we’d go to sleep… we had an old Victrola. Jack liked to play some records. His back hurt, the floor was so cold. I’d get out of bed at night and play it for him, when it was so cold getting out of bed… on a Victrola ten years old — and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot… “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”…There’ll never be another Camelot again…

Jackie Kennedy knew that she had to work to shape the legacy of her husband’s brief Presidency. And that she did.  But later White wrote that his article was a “misreading of history. The magic Camelot of John F. Kennedy never existed.”

Because Jack Kennedy was shot down in political prime, much of the legacy of his Presidency has been romanticized, as Jackie intended.  When Bobby was killed just after the California primary, the mantle fell to Ted.

I supposed in a “blue” state like Massachusetts it was only natural for the people to keep returning Ted Kennedy to Washington.  He wielded power.  He represented them well.  And while I find much of his politics deplorable, you can’t discount his effectiveness.

So, the assumption was that, to honor Ted, to honor the Kennedy legacy, to honor Camelot, that another Democrat would easily waltz into the Senate seat. 

Enter the American people.

At the beginning of the American Revolution the “Shot heard round the world” was fired from Concord, Massachusetts.  On Tuesday, the people of Massachusetts cast the votes heard ’round the world.

Tired of a Congress that doesn’t listen, a President with an agenda the American people don’t support, and independent enough to say that no one is owed a political seat, not in this country anyway, the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to send pickup driving Republican Scott Brown to Washington.

Camelot was always a myth.  And now, it’s history.

Congratulations Senator-Elect Scott Brown!

Virginia. New Jersey.  Now Massachusetts.

How’s that Hopey Changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

Will the President and the Democrats in Congress finally get the message?  The American people do not want your brand of socialism.  We don’t want your brand of health care.

You didn’t listen to the town halls. 

You didn’t listen to the Tea Parties.

Listen now, hear the roar of the voters.

With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.

U.S. Senator-Elect Scott Brown, Republican, Massachusetts

Indeed it is.

As Ed Morrissey asks today at Hot Air: Did Democrats outsmart themselves in Massachusetts?

This all seemed to go by plan for the Democrats.  They had ensured ideological continuity of the seat, and more importantly gave Harry Reid back his 60th vote for cloture, which allowed Reid and Obama to press forward with their plans to overhaul the American health-care system.  All they would need is to keep Kirk in place until Massachusetts sent another Kennedy protege to the Senate.

Enter the Coakley-Brown race where a Suffolk University Poll has Scott Brown leading Martha Coakley 50-46 (CBS News) and the Daily Caller says that Republican Scott Brown has raised at least one million dollars every day this week.

National attention has turned to Massachusetts where Republican State Senator Scott Brown now has a very realistic chance of taking the seat Ted Kennedy held since he was elected in 1962 to fill the seat for his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

But as Scott Brown reminded Massachusetts in last week’s debate: 

“Well, with all due respect it’s not the Kennedys’ seat, and it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

Newsbusters

Indeed, even more than the famed Wellstone funeral rally that ultimately lead to Norm Coleman’s 2002 victory over Walter Mondale, the Democrats may have again overplayed their hand.

This is Massachusetts.  This was supposed to be easy.

But in a time where the country is rallying against Obamacare and the liberal agenda in Washington, anything is possible, even in Massachusetts.  And Martha Coakley isn’t helping her own cause.  Consider these gaffes.

From the same debate Coakley said:

If the goal was and the vision in Afghanistan was to go in because we believe the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists, we supported that, I supported that goal. They are gone, they are not there anymore, they are in apparently Yemen and Pakistan.

The Weekly Standard

Doesn’t she read the news?  Or maybe it’s those darned Methodists with their suicide bombing tactics again.

We continue:

Then she takes a swipe at Fenway fans, and snarks at Brown’s handshaking event outside the Winter Classic hockey game.

Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Just yesterday on Ken Pittman’s show, she implied that if you’re pro life, you shouldn’t work in an Emergency Room.

Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.

Martha Coakley: No we have a seperation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: (……uh, eh…um..) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.

Finally (or is it?) we learn that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has decided to “help” Martha Coakley by releasing an ad with an image of Scott Brown and The World Trade Center.  Ben Smith, Politico

The ad and the image have been pulled, but thanks to Al Gore’s Intertubz, we have a screen cap.

Senator Brown is correct.  It’s not the Kennedy seat.  It’s not the Democrat’s seat.  It’s not Martha Coakley’s seat.

And the people are about to take it back.