Welcome to Friday’s with the ‘hammer.
Dr. K. (one of the few voices of sanity at the Washington Post) cuts through all the spin and tells the simple truth – that Scott Brown was able to win because he nationalized the race. Martha (or is it Marcia?) Coakley had Obama on her side, Brown had Curt Schilling – the bloody sock beat the cut out board, Fenway Park beat the salons of Georgetown and Cambridge. The good thing for the Republicans (and ultimately bad for the national Democrats) is that the Democrats are in complete and total denial as to what happened on Tuesday. Howard Dean actually claimed that it was a vote for more “progressive health care reform” leaving Chris “tingles up the leg” Matthews flabbergasted. Another such “victory” (coming on the heels of NJ, Va. And Ma.) and Obama will be ruined (the classic pyrrhic victory).
by Charles Krauthammer
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.
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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.
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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.
