They’re Shooting Hostages

by ‘tamerlane’

The liberals just shot their first hostage.  The candidacy of Martha Coakley, a solid if nondescript Democrat, was ceremoniously marched out and executed in broad daylight by the voters of the most liberal state in the Union.  Their demands had been very clear:  pass a real public health care reform bill, not a sham private health insurance mandate.  But the Democrats in Congress, and the fraud in the White House, refused to heed the warnings.  They thought they could put lipstick on a pig, call it “health care reform”, and we’d all be duped like we were in the Spring of ‘08.

Massachusetts was a bad place to test this assumption.  Bay Staters embrace their legacy of political defiance, dating back to when the original Patriot Act was enacted in 1775 on Lexington Green.  Despite being predominately Democrat or democrat-leaning, half of registered voters there are independents.  This is also an electorate with a habit of periodically placing conservatives in high office to course-correct its leftward drift.  Mitt Romney and Bill Weld were governors, and in the 1996 senate race, Bay Staters were toying with electing the conservative Weld until Kerry, in an unforgettable debate, woke up himself and the voters, then put on the afterburners.

There’s no denying that Coakley, a backroom player who figured she’d already done all that was required by maneuvering her way into the nomination, mismanaged her campaign.  Anyone who can’t identify Curt Schilling is unfit for office in Massachusetts.  But as any Gloucester fisherman will tell you, red skies in morning:  sailors take warning.  The clouds of this brewing red storm were ominously apparent for months, yet Coakley, the state party, and the DNC all were caught asleep at the wheel.

The Dems knew — and openly proclaimed — the symbolic and tangible significance of this race, of the need to replace Teddy, the longtime public healthcare champion, with someone who would ensure passage of Obama’s bill.  Did they not think the GOP was cognizant of that significance, too?  Unlike Democrats, Republicans have practical experience getting things done, like earning annual bonuses, outsourcing jobs, and running effective campaigns.  The RNC marshaled its forces and invested in Brown’s campaign at the critical moment.  The GOP correctly judged the tide, and deftly plotted a course toward the open berth at Kennedy Bay.

In a bizarre twist, the Democrats now had to play catch-up in a race they were leading.  Their response:  appeal to the voters’ desire to support Obama and to pass his health bill.  The Dem leadership must have been tippling off some left-over barrels of kool-aid, because all the polls showed that Brown’s surge was due solely to a backlash over Obama’s joke of a bill.  Coakley’s only salvation would have been to publicly distance herself from it, to declare “when I get to the Senate, I’ll won’t vote for any health care reform bill unless it contains a public option!”  But Coakley is a mundane party hack.

Massachusetts is Clinton country — Hillary won the primary by 15 points.  So in desperation, the DNC dispatched Bill to point out how repulsively rightwing Brown was.  But then they also sent in Obama, and made a last ditch appeal to “save health care.”  And that’s what the voters of Massachusetts, in their minds at least, did.  They shot a hostage to save real health care reform.

Unfortunately, once you start shooting your hostages, things can only end one of two ways:  either your demands are met, or you end up dead, too.  The rightwingers are crowing loud and mighty that the Brown victory proves that Americans hate “ObamaCare” for being too “socialist.”  In Massachusetts, which has its own limited public health insurance program, ObamaCare was not socialist enough.  As this plays out, liberals would do well to remember that the enemy of my enemy is usually still my enemy.  Extreme measures may be necessary to break the obots’ hold.  Electing Republicans simply to punish the Democrats might feel good in the moment, but it won’t do good in the long run.

So who’s the next hostage to go?  The Dem incumbents already considered the most vulnerable were: Blanche Lincoln, AK; Michael Bennet, CO; and our dear, old Harry Reid, NV; plus Dorgan’s seat in ND. Barbara Boxer had been considered a lock.  Democrats like to think of California as one big, smooth-sailing cruise ship for them.  The Poseidon was a cruise ship, too.  Boxer, an ardent Obama supporter who’ll likely face the dynamic political outsider Carly Fiorino, is already starting to sweat.

These senators, and a large portion of Democrats in the House, should have the image of the Massachusetts hostage shooting burned into their retinas.  Instead of trying to pass Obama’s sham bill, they ought to jump ship ASAP.  All politicians have a keen sense of self-preservation, but most don’t possess the brightest of minds.  Nor will the obot bolsheviks who hijacked the Party relinquish power without a fight.  So there’s no guarantee the Democrats will right their ship before the full storm hits.  And with a capsized Democratic Party, we’re at the mercy of the GOP.

Coakley would have made a competent, liberal senator.  Brown will be a horrible, extreme conservative one.  Losing the sixty-vote majority, which failed to yield any real results, (and which in any case was dependent on the DINO Lieberman) is no real loss.  Still, handing the enemy a solid liberal seat was an expensive way to send a message.  Let’s hope our demands will now be taken seriously.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.