Republican candidate Scott Brown has successfully knocked off his Democrat opponent Martha Coakley in a Massachusetts special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy‘s Senate seat. In doing so, the people of Massachusetts have all but doomed President Obama’s hopes for getting the currently proposed health care reform legislation passed. The message to our government seems clear: “We don’t like what you’re doing!” The surprising part is that it comes from Massachusetts. Massachusetts!! (Maybe Marco’s right about them folks being smarter than the average American.) If one of the bluest states in the nation (Obama won Mass. by 26 points just over a year ago) is turning its back on the party in charge, hopefully the liberal leadership will shut up and listen, rather than loudly asserting that they know what’s best for us all. (Personally, I hope they keep their fingers in their ears, and this story repeats in November.)
This article was originally published on GaneshaFish.com
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The Legal Satyricon 
That’s one way of interpreting the results of Scott Brown’s election.
Here’s another. When Americans overwhelmingly elect your party to office, giving you the White House, the Senate, and the House, they expect you to GOVERN. Not to spend a year caving in to the opposition and a couple of conservative “Democrats”. Americans like strength and direction and getting things done more than the futile chase for bi-partisanship.
If President Obama and the Democratic Party agrees with you, and scale back their agenda, and sit on their asses, they will be DESTROYED in this November’s mid-term elections. The base will stay home, and independents who voted for Obama will be more pissed that they already are. If however the Democrats use this day as a wake-up call, as a chance to grow a spine and a pair of big brass ones, they will be much better off…
This.
Good that Scott brown have won for the baystate and all america this is a very victory for the american people at baystate making the massege to congress about issues that is going out of control.It ia time to all america that this mid term election we can make a diffrent to washington,that we the working america we have enough of washington huge spending big goverment and not taking care of the average joe.Gop is back in track after one year go GOP.!!!
“…we have enough of Washington huge spending big government and not taking care of the average joe.”
You mean like the George W. Bush administration? Turning a record surplus into a record deficit in 8 years? Miss those days?
Bush ran up a record deficit? Check your facts, sir:
I was referring to a record deficit at the time Bush left office. Of course, the numbers have gotten worse since then. When you’re left holding the bag of an economy on the brink, you have two choices. You can spend money to try to prevent a disaster. Or, you can be Herbert Hoover, circa 1929.
Obama is like Mariano Rivera being given the ball with the bases loaded and no outs in the bottom of the 9th…
Well then it’s no longer a record deficit then, is it. Also, Bush was the one who oversaw TARP and the beginnings of recovery efforts. Obama’s the one who failed to grasp how economic stimulus is supposed to shock the system with cash before inflation hits, not spread it out over 10 years, with 10% being used in the first 12 months, accomplishing nothing but accruing MOAR DEBTS.
Um, check your tense, sir. It’s wholly true that Bush RAN up record deficits.
It’s either a pithy fun-fact, or a devastating counter-punch that the record fell the next year (depending on your party affiliation), but jfish is wrong and stoney’s right. STxU.
GOP “back on track” after a year? Let’s get this right, they gain one seat from an incompetent Democratic party, whose incompetence and lack of vision is eclipsed only by the GOP, and they’ve got everything in order? I don’t know why Brown won, and frankly those who claim they do don’t either. In retrospect, I’m glad he’s in there now because he’ll eliminate the filibuster proof majority that risked passage of this shitty health bill. Incidentally, I think universal healthcare is a noble cause, but this bill gives Joe Taxpayer about as much bang for your buck as an Arbee’s charging FIve Star Bistro prices. Nonetheless, don’t give me this garbage that the GOP is on track. The GOP had plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose the health bill, and instead perpetrated a lot of bullshit, and riled up people who know next to nothing about facts. Anyway, since this is a legal blog, and not a political one, I digress.
We certainly have room for political discussion… carry on!
Dems won’t use this as a wake-up call and will assume the people don’t know what’s in their best interest, despite having to pay an increasing share of their shrinking incomes to a burgeoning social net that benefits everyone but them. It’s not that DNC leadership is incapable of introspection, either — that’s normally a Palin-level problem — but they have too much hubris to do so.
Don’t pick a weak candidate and then forget to – ya know – campaign. I don’t see this as a referendum on the health care bill – I see this as the democrats royally screwing up a sure thing. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Very fair point. Coakley ran an arrogant, absent and awful campaign. Brown ran a smart, hard-working and efficient one. That obviously was a major fctor in the outcome.
It wasn’t just a sure thing. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 3-to-1 in Mass. This was something more than “dropping the ball.”
Agreed. Like I said, there’s a lot of pissed-off people out there, in every state. Where the disagreement may lie is WHY people are so angry, and what should be done about it.
Never under estimate the will of the american people voters’ when you have 3to 1 look what ahppend what a change
I had a sneaking suspicion as soon as pundits starting saying the peoples seat was Kennedy’s seat there was going to be trouble.Time and again critics and enemies have underestimated the United States,its will and its people.America continues to surprise.I will watching with great interest from my little sector of the universe.:D
I suspect and hope that rather a lot of people didn’t vote for Brown as much as they voted against Coakley. I might have done the same thing if I’d been in Massachusetts, because I couldn’t bring myself to vote for an unrepentant, certified witch hunter who has no compunction about abusing her office and throwing people under the bus who she surely knew to be innocent: http://www.salemnews.com/puopinion/local_story_015225322.html
This is the response from the U.S admin-
Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers. And on Tuesday night, the White House brokered a deal that could lead to a bipartisan commission to recommend spending cuts and tax increases to address the nation’s fiscal condition. For months, Mr. Obama’s advisers had warned that the perception that budget deficits and the national debt were spiraling out of control was alienating independent voters already turned off by partisan battling.
From the NYtimes-
Now if Republicans want any shot come 2012 ,they need to encourage financial diversity.That means break the big banks monopoly on the financial sector.Small local business going to smaller local financial institutions.Of course this will require a certain degree of trust amongst fellow citizens in those said communities.Americans need action in a republican way.And im not saying that from a party perspective either.
Pendulums, like 60’s hippies burdened with enough residual guilt to have gotten married, swing. Bush pushed the national plumb-bob way right. The Dems benefited from the return in 2008, and would have had to do something solid in the eyes of the independent-ish middle to stop the swing back toward center.