Scott Brown won in Massachusetts -- in MASSACHUSETTS, of all places. Conservatives everywhere are jubilant. I logged on to my facebook page to see posts of HE WON, HE WON, HE WON everywhere. (Yes, I have a lot of conservative friends.) It was a good piece of news in my day... I'll say that much.
And what of the democrat reaction? Well... that's more interesting even than the news that Brown won. Gail Collins of the NYT writes, "Looking on the bright side, having 60 votes in the Senate could have been more trouble than it was worth. With one less vote, expectations might be more modest." Uh-huh. People were just expecting too much of those sixty votes... that was the problem. What the Democrats really need is a way to blame problems on the Republican party again.
The NYT editorial board writes that the Dems "had an exceptionally weak candidate, but the result calls into question the party's tactical political competence." AH!! It doesn't call into question the president's radical agenda, only the competence of the party's political tactics to get it done. Hmmm... I suppose there's truth to that, to a certain degree. With the super-majority that they had, they should have been able to get the president's stuff completed before the election took place. In that respect, their tactics were nonexistent.
But the icing on the cake comes from Barack Obama's response to the election:
"Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts but the mood around the country - the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
"If there's one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And I do think that is a mistake of mine."
So... it's largely George W. Bush's fault... but to the extent that it's Obama's fault, it's because he has not been effective in telling the American people what their core values are... and how he needs to change institutions to more closely match what the American people's core values are supposed to be. Sheesh. Some nerve.
I know what my values are... and I know that what Obama and Congress are pushing don't match up to my values. I don't need an administration to be more effective in telling me what my values should be. And if they want to ramp that up in an effort to make sure the next election cycle doesn't include a bunch of Scott Brown upsets, I say go for it. No better way to tick off the voting public than to tell them all what they're supposed to think and believe now, too.
I'm almost back to loving politics again!
