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White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,” that he has “no doubt” the race for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat was winnable by Democrat Martha Coakley, but the White House was informed of her political peril too late. Couric, who was in Washington for the State of the Union address, asked Emanuel how “a master political operative” could have let Massachusetts go “down in flames for the Democrats?” “I, was here at the White House,” Emanuel replied. “As soon as it was brought to my attention, or...

Sign the petition for Scott Brown to be seated.

In the new movie The Young Victoria, the mother of Victoria and her chief overseer meet with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to discuss what role they’ll play now that Victoria has become queen of England. They’ve waged a fierce struggle to retain control over Victoria. Suddenly Melbourne cuts off the chatter and bluntly explains the situation. “You lost,” he says. That’s the situation that faces President Obama and his White House advisers. Months of polls on the president and his policies, the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s elections, then last week’s momentous Massachusetts Senate race – all have sent...

MASSACHUSETTS is a long way from Australia. Even so, you can count on the Rudd government paying close attention to what happened in the Bay State last week. A little known Republican, Scott Brown, won the Senate election by campaigning against the US President's radical healthcare plan. Massachusetts is sacred Democrat turf, held by the Kennedy clan for more than 40 years and by Democrats since 1952. It was the only state to vote for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972. Barack Obama's overreach on health care has plenty in common with Kevin Rudd's dogged pursuit of an emissions...

He’s The One, all right. The handsome, athletic pol with the comely wife and two lovely daughters who precipitously rose from the State Legislature to pull us all together. The fresh face and disarming underdog America’s been waiting for, someone who suffered through his parents’ divorce, watched his mom go on welfare and survived some wayward youthful behavior to become disciplined and successful — a lawyer, a lawmaker and a devoted family guy who does dog duty. Someone who’s always game for a game of pickup basketball, loves talking sports and even boasts beefcake photos. A pro-choice phenom propelled into...

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) insisted that the message sent by Massachusetts voters on January 19 was the same as it had been in cycles past. “I think Massachusetts voters were saying what voters in 06 said what voters in 08 said, ‘Our country’s not working right and we want you to change it.’” Hoyer said that change has not happened as quickly as people would like, but that Democrats should not be held completely responsible. After taking control of Congress in 2006, Hoyer claimed that Republican obstruction prevented a change in economic policies. “President

In addition to a roundtable that includes Roger Ailes and Arianna Huffington, TVNewser has learned substitute host of ABC's "This Week" Barbara Walters will interview Capitol Hill's man of the moment, Massachusetts Sen.-Elect Scott Brown. This will be Brown's first Sunday show appearance and the only one he's doing this weekend.

Biden: Losing supermajority may be a blessing By Eric Zimmermann - 01/26/10 02:10 PM ET Losing their 60 seat supermajority may be a good thing, Joe Biden suggested today. Speaking to a meeting of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Finance Committee, Biden said that the supermajority came with excessively high expectations. "Yes it's had a practical impact, but I'm not so sure what a blessing 60 votes was. Not a joke, I mean it sincerely," he said, according to a pool report. "When we had sixty votes there was the expectation left, right, and center that we could do everything...

The conventional wisdom (and common complaint) is that neither the National Republican Senatorial Committee nor the National Republican Committee helped Scott Brown prevail in Massachusetts: Today we saw an epic upset. We saw a Massachusetts miracle. Scott Brown, a relatively unknown moderate Republican, took on Martha Coakley and the Democrat establishment, and won. Scott Brown won with almost no help from the national GOP. Martha Coakley lost with the Democratic Party behind her all the way, with even Barack Obama campaigning for her. Yet the NRSC, at least, was involved in a big way, albeit under the radar. From Time...

Scott Brown is showing up many places, just not the State of the Union speech. The Republican senator-elect says he doesn't plan to attend President Barack Obama's first speech on Wednesday because "I don't even have a business card yet." Brown says he wants to wrap up his work as a Massachusetts state senator and thank people who helped elect him last week to the Senate seat held by the late Edward Kennedy. He's also meeting with local leaders, Gov. Deval Patrick, Boston reporters, ABC-TV's Barbara Walters and doing a bit for Jay Leno's NBC comedy show. Brown says he'll...

[Technical note]SCOTT BROWN: Position Paper on the United States - State of Israel Relationship [Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: The url for the pdf no longer works. But the Google cache of the pages http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:Qyqx8vjLzVQJ:www.solomonia.com/blog/images/2010/01/scottbrownisrael.pdf is still available. ] SCOTT BROWN U.S. SENATE 200 Reservoir Street, Suite 101, Needham, MA 02494 Position Paper on the United States - State of Israel Relationship Scott Brown (R-MA). Candidate for United States Senate December 2009 www.solomonia.com/blog/images/2010/01/scottbrownisrael.pdf I have always supported the important relationship between the United States and the State of Israel. Our two countries share a core set of national values including...

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs tried to spin the Scott Brown win as supportive of Barack Obama.

Once Scott Brown took away the Democrat majority in the Senate by becoming the Republican's 41st vote based in large part on the fact that Massachusetts voters were unhappy with Obamacare, one would think that President Obama and the Democrat Party would learn a vital lesson. A look at a dozen or so stories across the media over the last few days shows that the Democrats have indeed learned a lesson from Scott Brown's victory. But is it the right lesson? Did they learn that they'd better slow down their freight train of extremely left leaning policies? Did they learn...

In case you haven’t heard, the Left has launched a smear campaign against the HillBuzz blog. I summarized the situation in an e-mail to a friend: A group of gay men in Chicago who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries bolted when Obama got the nomination, and have continued blogging against the Obama agenda at their site, HilllBuzz. A couple of weeks ago, when HillBuzz started promoting Scott Brown’s campaign in Massachusetts (they dubbed him “Hottie McAwesome“), HillBuzz was threatened by the Left. And when they kept it up, they were then “outed” – i.e., their Internet anonymity was...

The Kennedy family has come out swinging against failed Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, who lost the race to succeed Ted Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, niece of Ted Kennedy, said bluntly that Coakley did not campaign enough. "You’ve got to fight," Townsend said. "That’s why Ted Kennedy was so great on jobs and health care and taking on the special interests. . . Coakley was a candidate who apparently said she didn’t want to be cold," Townsend says.

My favorite e-mail after Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory: “Can You Hear Us NOW?” Answer from Team Obama: “We Know - You Love Us!” There’s a point where blind arrogance becomes comic, and we passed the punch line long ago. Check out this headline from the Boston Globe-Democrat: “The Message: Loud But Not So Clear.” Not clear to whom? Bad policies and even worse politics drove this blue state to replace Ted Kennedy with a fiscally-conservative Republican. It wasn’t exactly a subtle message. And yet it’s still lost on folks like Globie Renee Loth, still defending the liberal status quo....

Some of the most melancholy letters and e-mails that are sent to me are from people who lament that there is nothing they can do about the bad policies that they see ruining this country. They don't have any media outlet for their opinions and the letters they send to their Congressmen are either ignored or are answered by form letters with weasel words. They feel powerless. Sometimes I remind them that the whole political establishment — both Democrats and Republicans, as well as the mainstream media — were behind amnesty for illegal immigrants, until the public opinion polls showed...

Taxes: On the eve of President Obama's first State of the Union address, two Democratic congressmen are advising him to extend the Bush tax cuts instead of letting them expire. Now that's a stimulus. We hear that the administration is considering taking a more populist tack as it sails the choppy political waters of 2010. Some of President Obama's plans reportedly include several tax tidbits for the "middle class," including a doubling of the child care tax credit for families below $85,000 in income, and $1.6 billion for child care and a cap on student loan payments. Such transparent populism...

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00001

Howard Dean claims Scott Brown's victory was the result of Obama not being liberal enough to energize their base.