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That Old Obama Magic Is Back
· Thursday, January 21, 2010
Once again, the people have spoken, and this time they quoted what Dick Cheney said to Pat Leahy.
Less than two weeks ago, The New York Times said that so much as a "tighter-than-expected" victory for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley would incite "soul-searching among Democrats nationally," which sent Times readers scurrying to their dictionaries to look up this strange new word, "soul."
A close win for Coakley, the Times said, would constitute "the first real barometer of whether problems facing the party" will affect the 2010 elections.
But when Coakley actually lost the election by an astounding 5 points, the Chicago boys in the White House decided it was the chick's fault.
Democratic candidate Martha Coakley may be a moral monster, but it's ridiculous to blame her for losing the election. She lost because of the Democrats' obsession with forcing national health care down the nation's throat.
Coakley campaigned exactly the way she should have.
As a Democrat running in a special election for a seat that had been held by a Democratic icon (and another moral monster) for the past 46 years in a state with only 12 percent registered Republicans, Coakley's objective was to have voters reading the paper on Friday, saying: "Hey, honey, did you know there was a special election four days ago? Yeah, apparently Coakley won, though it was a pretty low turnout."
Ideally, no one except members of government unions and Coakley's immediate family would have even been aware of the election.
And until Matt Drudge began covering it like a presidential election a week ago, it might have turned out that way.
Coakley had already won two statewide elections, while her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, had only won elections in his district. She had endorsements from the Kennedy family and the current appointed Democratic senator, Paul Kirk -- as well as endless glowing profiles in The Boston Globe.
And by the way, as of Jan. 1, Brown had spent $642,000 on the race, while Coakley had spent $2 million.
On Jan. 8, just 11 days before the election, The New York Times reported: "A Brown win remains improbable, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1 in the state and that Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, has far more name recognition, money and organizational support."
It was in that article that the Times said a narrow Coakley win would be an augury for the entire Democratic Party. But now she's being hung out to dry so that Democrats don't have to face the possibility that Obama's left-wing policies are to blame.
Alternatively, Democrats are trying to write off Brown's colossal victory as the standard seesawing of public sentiment that hits both Republicans and Democrats from time to time. As MSNBC's Chris Matthews explained, it was just the voters saying "no" generally, but not to anything in particular.
Except when Republicans win political power, they hold onto it long enough to govern. The Democrats keep being smacked down by the voters immediately after being elected and revealing their heinous agenda.
As a result, for the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years -- either from the White House or Capitol Hill -- thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn't like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn't like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters' first possible opportunity.
Obama has cut the remembering-what-we-don't-like-about-Democrats stage of this process down from two to four years to about 10 months. Folks, I'm convinced that if we all work really hard, we can get it down to three months.
Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years -- and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.
Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic Republican sweep of Congress, which killed the entire Clinton agenda (with the exception of partial-birth abortion and felony obstruction of justice) -- and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.
And now, merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.
In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven't voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor's office by 17 points.
Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points -- the largest margin for a Democratic Senate candidate in that state in a quarter-century.
Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. (Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.)
The Democrats have no natural majority because they have no fundamental principles -- at least none that they are willing to state out loud. They are like a drunken vagrant who emerges from the alley to cause havoc every few years. They are the perpetual toothache of American politics.
To be sure, the fact that 52 percent of Massachusetts voters are racist, sexist tea-baggers -- i.e., voted for a Republican -- means only that the Democrats just went from having the largest congressional majority in a generation to the second largest. But this was "Teddy Kennedy's seat." And it was in Massachusetts.
Now, no Democrat is safe.
But the country just got a lot safer.
COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
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David Beach in Sacramento
Good essay, Ann. Let's make Boxer the next one, please!
Posted January 21, 2010 at 12:39:26 AM
Phil Herold
Boxer, Reid, Specter, Nelson, Landreiu...the list is endless.
Posted January 21, 2010 at 5:55:07 AM
The Notorious U.S.A.
If only Americans had longer attention spans we wouldn't get those Democratic buffer years. Ah well, as the saying goes, one must often hear mindless rabble to recognize thoughtful common sense.
Posted January 21, 2010 at 1:50:57 PM
Agent Orange
It is frightening how so many citizens are willing to leave their future up to a mindless but seemingly soothing sound bite repeated from a nothing like Obama or Coakley. One catch phrase like "restore our faith in government" and it is back to sleep. Maybe Scott Brown and the Massachusetts electorate can show the nation how it can be if someone is willing to point out the rewards of paying attention.
Posted January 21, 2010 at 4:52:05 PM
Renee, SoCal
Thank God the Massachusetts voters woke up! Then again, maybe they felt they finally had a real choice after being held hostage by Kennedy guilt for all these years. The Bay State voters did what was best for them. God help the rest of us if we don't.
The Dems' health care proposal is/has always been a stinking pile of you-know-what, evidenced by the fact that they couldn't get it passed WITH A MAJORITY. How pathetic. More pathetic that the outcome of one election buries it.
Posted January 21, 2010 at 6:49:50 PM
MichaelSSEC
This is one of those Coulter columns that I wish I'd written myself. If Ms Coulter were a UFC fighter, she'd be Anderson Silva. Her punches are hard, quick and deadly accurate.
My motto for the past year has been "Keep talking, Liberals! Keep talking!" Luckily for America, they heard me.
I do feel the need to take issue with one minor point in Ms Coulter's column. Long before the esteemed Mr Drudge took up the Brown cause, Conservative talk radio in MA -- led by the tireless Michael Graham and the razor-witted Jay Severin -- tag-teamed with Conservative bloggers to turn the race into a referendum on Obama's radical policies. Drudge certainly brought us welcome national attention. We started getting messages from people all over America who wanted to donate money to the Brown campaign, and who saw the race as a literal vote on Obama. But those of us here in MA who fought this fight on talk radio and the blogosphere, wrote reams of blogs and comments on columns like Michael Grahams, that unquestionably opened people's eyes to what this race actually meant.
The people of MA, especially Conservatives, worked very hard to change the opinions of actual voters here. It was a labor of love, and easily the most exciting campaign I've seen in 30 years of following politics here. But the fight is just getting started. This was Round One. We've got 10 months to campaign nationwide for all the other Congressional seats coming up in this mid-term. This will be the biggest sweep in American history. Hoo RAH!
Posted January 21, 2010 at 9:11:48 PM
ILEANA
Great job in Mass., Michael! I never thought the elitist Bostonians would EVER vote conservative. I had encounters with some of them at conferences or on my travels and they really do think themselves as superior beings while the rest of us are inferior creatures.
Posted January 22, 2010 at 11:34:51 PM
George I. Cawhern
I can't wait for the mid-terms Independants, are lining up in the conservative line 'We The People" will be back in control
Posted January 25, 2010 at 2:50:18 PM
Greg Welch
This is not an original. Proper attribution is necessary to our First Lady. But,this is the truely first time that I can honestly say that, " I AM PROUD TO BE FROM MASSACHUSETTS. " let's hope that the people from Pa. ( A. Spector, D - Pa., Nv. ( H. Reid, D - Nev., and B. boxer, D - Ca.) can say the same also.
Posted February 6, 2010 at 4:16:33 PM