The meaning of Scott Brown’s win, by Charles Krauthammer

Keene Sentinel ^ | , January 22, 2010 | Charles Krauthammer’s

[george76]

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.

Bull’s-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue...78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

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.

[Gene Eric]

>> Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that ...

LOL, Scott’s win is Bush’s fault.

[arista]

“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.”

I wonder how he was planning to justify to voters the idea that non-unionized workers should have their health care taxed, while unionized worked should not be taxed.

[mreerm]

Krauthamer for Pres...

[LiberConservative]

Go back to sleep ‘Rats. You just had a bad dream. That’s all. A bad dream. Go back to sleep. (chortle)

[realpatriot]

I second that!

[SouthTexas]

they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

Yep, they nailed me to a "T".

[freekitty]

I hope the GOP heard what the SCOTUS ruled. They just gave us freedom of speech.

Oh, I forgot, McCain, the scumbag RINO, tried to take it away.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

Here’s the link on Digg. Please digg this up!

[cubreporter]

Charles said it all and echoed all of us too I am sure.

[Marine_Uncle]

Let us hope the analysis provided by Charle's echoes down through the L/MSM once and for all. They should understand their readerships/viewers will continue to plunge as more people become wise to Fox News and the more conservative Internet News media.
Let the L/MSM start to fear they may be willing supporters of a lame duck administration that has done more harm to this country then well perhaps ... Jimmity Catta, thus far. Of course the one pen stroke by BJClinton regarding changing the rules on how banks make loans to the lame, blind and halt, may end up being worse then anything Catta did not do or did. The security derivatives continue to scam the world and make certain fat bankers even richer at the expense of the world at large.
That being said. Obi and his henchmen hopefully will stay brazen and resolved and bring even more wrath down upon themselves and their commiecrat membership on the Hill.
With that being said. I have to hit the rack. 3:30AM comes soon. work work work. Do have a great upcoming day.

[DownInFlames]

Zero is radioactive. He is now 0-3 in backing Dem candidates. Come this summer’s primaries, he will be persona non grada.

[r9etb]

The reason both wings of American liberalism — congressional and mainstream media — were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they’d spent Obama’s first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

Amazingly, I think Krauthammer has actually misjudged the nature and extent of this sentiment. Certainly the tea party movement defines some of the energy, but it cannot explain why Brown also won in Barney Frank's district.

If my wife (who is not conservative) is any guide, the real energy comes from those in the middle-to-left who have a) realized that the nation is on a suicidal course; and b) who have become utterly cynical about the politicians who want to fool us into believing otherwise.

Put another way, these people are the same demographic who formed the Reagan Democrats back in the 80s. They are the fabled swing vote, if we can only craft and live up to a message that attracts them.

It's a real opportunity, if conservatives can give up their tunnel-vision RINO-hating idiocies.

[muleskinner]

It's a real opportunity, if conservatives can give up their tunnel-vision RINO-hating idiocies.

Uh-oh, here comes trouble. Good luck, r9etb.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

tunnel-vision RINO-hating idiocies.

Uhhhh...don't we have some of that here?

[r9etb]

Uh-oh, here comes trouble. Good luck, r9etb.

Well, what can I say ... I'll call self-destructive behavior by name. I've never seen so many delusional conservatives in my life, as have sprouted on FR threads over the last year.

I'd much rather win half a political victory than lose an entire political war.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Hopefully the last rain storm has left out here.

[Captain Kirk]

Krauthamer for Pres...

Now that's a crazy idea. Krauthamer was an unabashed cheerler for the Bernanke/Bush/Obama bank bailouts and Fed inflation and this is thus part of the problem not the solution.

[Captain Kirk]

typos correctedKrauthamer for Pres...

Now that's a crazy idea. Krauthammer was an unabashed cheerleader for the Bernanke/Bush/Obama bank bailouts and Fed inflation and is thus part of the problem not the solution.

[realpatriot]

What was his position regarding the forced lending policies of bwawnie fwank? THERE is the root of the problem.