Piercing the cocoon

Is the illusion of inevitability which has, at least in the mainstream press, surrounded the Obama re-election effort beginning to fade? Are some in the press starting to recognize that he's in a very tough spot for an incumbent?

I don't think we'd see the likes of this story from the AP if they weren't...

GOP mood toward Romney's fall prospects brighten

A conservative base that was deeply splintered during the Republican primaries has coalesced around Romney even faster than some in the party were expecting.

That's the case with Bobbi Jo Rohrberg, a 36-year-old teacher and conservative blogger from southwestern Iowa who backed Santorum at the state's leadoff caucuses in January. She was worried a Romney nomination would look too much like McCain's fateful run.

Rohrberg said Romney initially struck her as someone who was "not going to have a lot of bite, not going to show the teeth, going to be very likeable and agreeable to go along and get along, which isn't going to get you anywhere if you are going to win."

But she said those concerns faded after Romney blasted Obama outside failed California solar energy company Solyndra, which received federal stimulus loans, and his recent efforts to brand the president as incapable of guiding the economy.

Any of us who watched Mitt lose gracefully (the "Kennedy country" line notwithstanding) to Ted Kennedy back in 1994 shared those concerns, of course. That's part of the reason that it's been so heartening to see his campaign not just attacking and responding to attacks, but doing so consistently, quickly and effectively.

Of course, there is a wealth of material to work with.  Let's face it, as much as they'd like it to be, Obama's record is not exactly Reagan's in '84...

Not the adverb I'd have chosen...

Boehner on JFK

"Sadly, this is the first Congress to convene without a Kennedy since the Truman administration," Boehner said, as turned to his left.

I'm reminded of Bart Simpson, listening to Poe's The Raven during the first Treehouse of Horror episode. "You know what would have been scarier than nothing? ANYTHING!"

What would be better than "sadly"? ANYTHING! Joyfully, thankfully, happily, mercifully, gratefully, there's no Kennedy in the Congress.




(Of course, you can parse it to make it true - it's very sad that there have been Kennedy's, namely Teddy and Patrick, in the Congress for the last fifty years - but that's clearly not what Boehner meant. What this country has needed for a very long time is fewer and better Kennedy's, and given the unlikelihood of the latter, the former is just dandy, thanks...)

In 2011, there will be no elected Kennedy's from Hyannis in the Federal government

This is a very good thing...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election to Congress, saying his life is "taking a new direction" just months after the death of his father and mentor, Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The Rhode Island Democrat taped a message to be aired on the state's television stations Sunday night. The Associated Press viewed the message Thursday, ahead of the announcement.

"Now having spent two decades in politics, my life is taking a new direction, and I will not be a candidate for re-election this year," Kennedy says in the ad.

One of the greatest needs of the United States body politic has been for fewer and better Kennedys. In the absence of better, fewer works just fine.

And maybe it isn't too late for Patrick to go out and actually find himself a real life. God only knows how much damage was done to him as a person by his upbringing, but this might be the best thing that could happen to him...

How Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Massachusetts Democrats elected Scott Brown

There are so many items on the agenda today that I don't have time to get to all of them. Let's start with a little Law of Unintended Consequences consideration.

So let me start with this statement: Democrats, both in Massachusetts and in the Federal Government, are responsible for the election of Scott Brown.

Here's why:

Q: Why is Scott Brown the Senator-elect from Massachusetts today?
A: He won the special election to fill the seat left vacant when Ted Kennedy died.

Q: He won in Massachusetts? How did that happen?
A: It was the only election in the country, and drew national attention, as well as millions of dollars of donations from all over.

Q: That's it? It was the only election?
A: Well, that's not the only thing. A significant majority has been offended by the actions of the Senate Democrats and the President over the past two months as they've attempted to force through a health care "reform" bill that the electorate has clearly decided it doesn't want. That energized people so that everyone who wanted that bill stopped saw Scott Brown as a way to do it.

Q: Why was the election held in January when Federal elections generally take place in November?
A: Senator Kennedy died in August, and the law required that they hold a special election within 145 days of a vacancy.

Q: Doesn't the governor normally appoint an interim Senator until the next Federal election?
A: In most states, that is the case. It was the case in Massachusetts, as well, until 2004.

Q: What happened in 2004?
A: The Democrats in the state house, thinking that John Kerry might win the White House and fearing that Governor Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican who would hold that Senate seat for two years, changed the law¹, and overrode a gubernatorial veto, to require a special election.

Q: Wait a minute - if the Democrats changed the law to remove appointment power, what has Paul Kirk been doing in Washington?
A: Well, when Ted Kennedy got sick, the Democrats feared that a vote may come up on health care reform between the time of his death and the holding of the special election, so they changed the law again², allowing for the appointment of an interim Senator.


There are several alternate scenarios under which the Democrats would still hold that Senate seat. But the Law of Unintended Consequences is relentless and remorseless.

Alternate scenario 1: The Democrats don't play politics and change the law in 2004. Upon Kennedy's death, Deval Patrick appoints an interim Senator who will be up for re-election in November of 2010, along with 33 other Senators and every member of the House of Representatives.

Alternate scenario 2: Senator Kennedy resigns upon being diagnosed in May of 2008. The seat is filled during the November 2008 election that saw Barack Obama win the White House. The Democratic candidate, whether Martha Coakley or someone else, wins handily in a race that draws little attention inside the state and no national coverage.

Alternate scenario 3: The Democrats don't play politics and change the law in 2009. The seat remains empty from the time of Senator Kennedy's death until the special election. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 4: The Democrats don't convince Arlen Specter to change parties. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 5: The Democrats don't steal the Minnesota Senate seat from Norm Coleman. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 6: Barack Obama governs as he campaigned. The Federal Government doesn't pass a $700 billion stimulus, doesn't take over GM and Chrysler and banks, doesn't try to nationalize one-sixth of the US economy, and, therefore, doesn't turn an economic downturn into a deep recession. The anger around the country doesn't materialize to the extent that it has now, and Coakley, despite a lackluster campaign, wins fairly easily.

But they did those things, and now the seat is gone. Scott Brown will be a United States Senator for the next two years.


¹ - Boston Globe, 2/19/2004

Massachusetts Democrats are devising a plan to keep John F. Kerry's US Senate seat in their party's hands by blocking Governor Mitt Romney from naming an interim replacement if Kerry wins the White House.

Frank Phillips, Globe Staff. (2004, February 19). DEMOCRATS EYE PLAN TO PROTECT KERRY SENATE SEAT :[THIRD Edition]. Boston Globe,p. A.1. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 547183041).


² - Boston Globe, 9/23/2009

The state Senate approved a bill yesterday that would let Governor Deval Patrick appoint an interim successor to Edward M. Kennedy, paving the way for the appointment of a new US senator as early as tomorrow and providing Democrats in Washington the potential 60th vote they have been seeking to pass a health care overhaul.

Matt Viser. (2009, September 23). Senate OK's Kennedy successor bill :Governor could name interim pick tomorrow. Boston Globe,p. A.1. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 1864237401).

With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley...

Contemplating the 47-year Senate career which not only ended before passing his signature bill, but was immediately followed by the seat being captured by a Republican, with the one remaining Kennedy in elected office being a joke of a US Representative in RI who has already reached his peak. I was not a fan of Ted Kennedy, or any of the other Kennedys, but there's a lesson for all of us in seeing how quickly the overwhelming wealth and power which he represented just evaporates. As the teacher said,

Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? ... There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow...

This is not the feeling that I expected to start the day after with, and I enjoy gloating and schadenfreude as much as anyone else, but that turns out to be the first thing that I want to say...

I met a traveller from a New Eng-land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand on the Cape....Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Teddy Kennedy, Lion of the Senate,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

"It's not the Kennedy's seat, it's not the democrat's seat..."

For too many people, for too long, it has been "Teddy Kennedy's seat." Scott Brown correctly says, "it's not the Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."

I didn't see any of the debate, but heard most of it. What I heard sounded like a good night for Scott Brown.

It may be possible...

Kelo revisited

Like many others, I ranted and raved about the Supreme Court's judicial obscenity decision in Kelo vs. New London. It was an offense to the Constitution and everything for which it should stand.

Well, the whole process has become, if possible, even more obscene.

...four years after that decision gave Susette Kelo's land to private developers for a project including a hotel and offices intended to enhance Pfizer Inc.'s nearby corporate facility, the pharmaceutical giant has announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut...While Ms. Kelo and her neighbors lost their homes, the city and the state spent some $78 million to bulldoze private property for high-end condos and other "desirable" elements. Instead, the wrecked and condemned neighborhood still stands vacant, without any of the touted tax benefits or job creation.

So the Supreme Court gave the city of New London authority and permission to take non-blighted houses from law-abiding citizens in order to give the land to a wealthy corporation. They went ahead and took the houses. They destroyed them. And now the whole area is sitting vacant, because business conditions change, and that wealthy corporation, for whom the city raped and plundered the property of law-abiding taxpayers, has decided that they're not only not going to expand, they're actually leaving the area.

When he got to where he was going, Ted Kennedy¹ had a lot to answer for...



¹ - Ted Kennedy was essentially single-handedly responsible for defeating the nomination to the Supreme Court of Robert Bork. That spot ended up going to Anthony (no relation) Kennedy, who provided the fifth and deciding vote to legalize theft and destruction against the good people of New London.

An appropriate Kennedy memorial - more screwing of the taxpayers

One of the memorable moments during the 2004 Presidential Campaign was Zell Miller's brilliant speech at the Republican Convention, as he eviscerated John Kerry's opposition to virtually every recent weapon system or military platorm, culminating in that unforgettable line, "US Forces armed with what? Spitballs?" (starts about 30 seconds into this video):


Well, John Kerry has found some "defense spending" of which he approves:

A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The earmark, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

...

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It seems like a hanging curve ball, but I confess that it leaves me speechless. How do you actually deconstruct or mock a statement as full of self-mocking arrogance and irony as that one? Ted Kennedy may have sat on the Armed Services Committee for years, but he did so while fighting against every expansion, improvement and use of the US military over that same period of time. There is no segment of the federal government for which Kennedy did not fight for increased funding except the military. The idea that US taxpayers should allocate defense funds¹ to provide a "repository for Kennedy’s papers" is so outrageous that I honestly can not find anything appropriate to say about it.



¹ - Realistically, it doesn't matter whether the money is allocated in a defense bill or a department of Education funding bill or HUD or anything else. Money is fungible, and if the government decides it's going to spend money on this, well, the taxpayers foot the bill. It's just impossible to conceive of a less appropriate bill in which to include this particular waste of taxpayer dollars.

What can I say? I agree...

Early leader for quote of the day. Steyn:

As for the argument that, well, for a rich and powerful man Ted sure did a lot for da liddle guy, include me out. Benign paternalism and droit du seigneur are two halves of the same coin: the former has excused the latter in monarchical societies through the ages. It's distressing to see so many alleged "democrats" embrace it here.

Civility's important. But...

Steyn gets it right (as usual)...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation — or, at any rate, its “mainstream” media culture — declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists.

There's a great scene from the first episode of Bochco's Murder One, in which a drunk in a bar makes a comment to Daniel Benzali's Theodore Hoffman. And Hoffman turns to him and says:

"Do you think anyone in this bar believes you've got a head of hair? We all know that's a comb-over. But until you get so obnoxious that you forfeit your right to civil treatment, no one in here points it out...Civility's important. That's why no one in here called you a self-deceiving fool until you opened your drunken mouth."

I was willing to just let the Kennedy stuff go. Until it go so obnoxious that it required comment. You want to talk about how his was a historic run, how he was important in getting a lot of (to my mind noxious) legislation passed, fine. His term was historic, he was a key part of the government for the past 40 years. You want to say that he was good to his kids and his nieces and nephews, well, maybe that's true, too. Maybe it's not his fault that his kids are so screwed up. But don't tell me what a great guy he was when no one was watching, because there's just far too much evidence to the contrary, and as the hagiography drags into the fourth day, someone needs to mention it...

OK. One Kennedy comment

I wasn't going to make any further comment. I really wasn't.

But the front page of today's Boston Globe changed my mind.



We're all flawed. As Paul wrote to the Romans, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." So I'm not going to talk about the cheating that got him kicked out of school or the girl that he left to die in his car or the alcohol and sexual assaults. No, I just want to talk briefly about his career in the Senate.

He was in the Senate for a long time. He was a tremendously active and effective legislator. And he was an undying supporter of racial preferences, failure to control the borders, amnesty for illegals, expansion of the welfare state, unilateral disarmament, abortion and a free-wheeling, liberal, living interpretation of the United States Constitution. For anyone who believes that the judicial confirmation process is broken, well, there's one man to blame, with his outrageous and false attack on Robert Bork.


So, in response to President Obama's comment about "the extraordinary good that he did," I just want to say the following.

Ted Kennedy did as much damage to the United States, to its economy, its culture and body politic, as it was possible for a man in his position to do. Ted Kennedy did more damage to the United States, to its economy, its culture and body politic, than any other politician in living memory.

And now I've got nothing more to say.

Ted Kennedy

De mortuis, nil nisi bonum.

I will have no further comment. Not now, anyway.

Other than to say part of the reason I could never be a politician is that I could never, ever release a statement like this one from Mitt Romney...