It’s Ted Kennedy’s seat no longer. Scott Brown walked into the Lion’s Den and defeated Martha Coakley, spoiling the Democrats’ chance at a filibuster-proof Senate on Tuesday. The Democratic Party would like you to believe that this was an isolated event, but it wasn’t. This election was a referendum on the president and the party he leads.
In 2008, President Obama won only four states by greater margins than Massachusetts. The Bay State was the bluest of the blue. Today, they have a Republican senator for the first time in 38 years, and it wasn’t a fluke.
Massachusetts was one of the safest places to be a Democrat. All 10 congressmen are Democrats. All won their seat in 2008 by at least 20 points.
Some even ran uncontested. The governor is a staunch liberal, and both state houses are controlled by the left. If Massachusetts isn’t safe this year, is anyone?
Democratic members of Congress are getting a wake-up call. This is still a center-right country. You cannot govern from the left. Republicans lost power in 2006 and 2008 because they lost their way and not because public opinion shifted.
The Democratic leaders missed that key fact. The people were not voting down failed policies. They were voting down failed leaders in 2008. Candidate Obama was wrong to attack “eight years of failed policies.” The policies weren’t the problem.
The conservative message was strong, but the messengers were weak and lacked credibility.
The Republican Party learned that lesson in a hurry, however. The left calls them the party of “no,” but they actually have plenty of answers and they are back on track.
Right or wrong, if you’re willing to listen, the Republican Party is ready to offer their solutions. One of the critical failures of the Obama era is that the powerful leaders in Congress closed the Republicans out. They had their super-majority and didn’t need any outside input so they simply went on alone.
Branding the Republicans as a party of “no” didn’t work. The Democratic Party, as it often does, miscalculated the intelligence of the American people. It’s obvious that the Democrats were trying to govern alone, but they wanted us to believe that they asked for Republican ideas. They wanted us to believe that the Republicans just said, “We don’t have ideas.”
The American people didn’t buy it. The people of Massachusetts didn’t buy it.
Kudos to the voters who saw through the Democratic smokescreen. Senator Scott Brown is heading to Washington on your behalf.
His vote ensures that the Democrats will actually have to work with Republicans instead of just pretending to.
The president and congressional leaders couldn’t fool the American people.
You can’t hide from your promises of bipartisanship by trying to make the minority party look unwilling to talk.
Americans don’t like false promises, and electing a Republican in Massachusetts shows just how upset the people are with the current Democratic leadership.
Let this be a warning. The honeymoon is over. If this Congress and this president don’t start making good on their promises, the people will show them the door very quickly.
As one congressman put it on Election Night, “the American people are out for blood.” And as the people of Massachusetts just showed us, no one is safe.
