Obama's -"Bring it on" moment

[Danno 1,228]

The Meaning of Brown

by Charles Krauthammer

01/22/2010

On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health care reform. "If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have."

The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don't throw her a millstone.

After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that ... it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.

And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama not Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.

Bull's-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don't Mirandize terrorists. Don't raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.

These deals -- the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback -- had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff -- in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a ("Cadillac") health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized.

The reason both wings of American liberalism -- congressional and mainstream media -- were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they'd spent Obama's first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year's two gubernatorial elections.

The evidence was unmistakable: Independents, who in 2008 had elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey. On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who had gone 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.

Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to diss Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal -- of a man who had them swooning only a year ago -- something is going on beyond personality.

That something is substance -- political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power -- even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can't even see is in your own interest.

Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?

"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up."

I say: Let them sleep.

[Peikko 1,575]

I thought Brown hadn't decided what he was going to do in terms of his health care vote? Perhaps I misread that...

Edited January 24, 2010 by Madame Cleo

[Pooky 3,844]

Danno, just because you type in a larger font doesn't make what you type (or paste) look louder.

Quit supersizing fonts. I'm having to move the laptop further away to read and I've got short legs!

[SuperDuper! 230]

Danno, just because you type in a larger font doesn't make what you type (or paste) look louder.

Quit supersizing fonts. I'm having to move the laptop further away to read and I've got short legs!

[Danno 1,228]

I thought Brown hadn't decided what he was going to do in terms of his health care vote? Perhaps I misread that...

Seemed like the longer his campaign went along the more that theme picked up steam.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Oh yeah he said often that voting against the Health care was his main object. The last remaining sheep are still drinking the Koolaid big time.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

How desperate are the Republicans over a seat? See the hoopla over the Brown win...

[luckytxn 2,265]

About as desperate as the Socialists are right now.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

About as desperate as the Socialists are right now.

Socialists have the majority?? Texas really is like a whole other country...

[scandal 951]

Socialists have the majority?? Texas really is like a whole other country...

To hear them tell it, we're not just commiesforchrist, we're the real deal bolshevik menace reborn.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

To hear them tell it, we're not just commiesforchrist, we're the real deal bolshevik menace reborn.

Are we that transparent?

[scandal 951]

Are we that transparent?

Unfortunately Comrade, yes.

The Revolution will succeed, but the enemies are onto us and have sussed out our plans. We must make haste to quickly overtake the means of production from the kapitalists and return them to the proletariat. For the motherland!!

[luckytxn 2,265]

Yes they still have the majority and they have a nice bill from the Senate they can vote on right now and pass anytime they want so just do it. The back room deals have been made so they have to do something so they are desperate. The last two election cycles I have noticed the insurance money have been going to the Socialist coffers as it used to go to the Neocons. The money would have dried up by now if they hadn't made a sweetheart deal by now and came to some sort of understanding. In fact Reid was the top money receiver from them but a few months ago I noticed he was now the second or third and Pelosi was always about the 5th or 6th from them. If I remember out of the top 10 money gatherers from the Insurance industry and their pacs the Socialists were the 8 or 9 with one or two Neocons rounding it out. They have to do something as they have been paid off. I laugh when I kept hearing the top money gatherers rail against the same people paying them. It is all lip service.

So do it already. There is a nice bill from the Senate ready to be voted on and they have the votes to pass it tomorrow in the house and Obama the Socialist can have it signed by the time of his state of the union. Of course they could try to reconcile it still but the Rep pukes can block it now. Too bad the people in Massachusettes pulled a fast one as they already have their health care and didn't want to pay even more taxes to cover the rest of the country. Nice, very nice.

Forgot to add though. Olympia Snowe is there and ready to vote with the Socialists as soon as she gets whats she wants from them. Give it to her. Love it how it all works out. Everyone is getting as shafted as when the Neocons ran the place.

Edited January 25, 2010 by luckytxn

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Lets hope that...

1. He really believes his own nonesense

2. Other Democrats really believe his nonsense

3. They continue to spout nonsense

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

How desperate are the Republicans over a seat? See the hoopla over the Brown win...

You are right. It is JUST one seat. Means nothing. Much a-do about nothing , eh? So, uh, when do you expect that health care bill to ever see the light of day again? Just sayin'