Did Scott Brown win (in part) because of Teddymandering?

Rush ^ | January 21st | George in Jacksonville

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

RUSH: We'll start in Jacksonville, Florida, with George. Great to have you on the program today, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it's an honor to be speaking with you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I will tell you after monumental events like the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, I sometimes wonder "what if." And I remember when Senator Kennedy, on his death bed, sent a letter to Deval Patrick and said, (paraphrasing) "No, no, no, can't follow the law, let's change the law and immediately appoint somebody because health care is that important." My teenaged daughter sometimes says, "Karma is a witch." And I'm wondering whether if that had not changed, whether today Martha Coakley might be the new Senator from Massachusetts.

RUSH: A bunch of people doing postmortems on this would agree with you that if they had just followed the law and gone ahead with their special election and not changed the law so that the governor could appoint somebody, then they would probably have still held onto the 60th seat. There's no question about that in fact.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

It's fairly obvious to me the biggest reason why Brown won. Brown repeatedly campaigned as Mr 41, and his supporters ended up chanting 'fourty one, fourty one' once elected. He won because of healthcare.

But I think this is a great point worth considering; how many people were burnt up big time over the rules change-game?

[Northern Yankee]

I reckon they outfoxed themselves.

Just darn! ; )

[jamaksin]

Elections for US Senate are state-wide. While the liberal bastions in MA went heavily dim-0-crat (e.g., Cambridge, Brookline, ...), many towns outside the 128/495 belts in central and western MA went for Brown.

Considering Barney Frank (Dim, Planet Unknown), on the other hand, is in the US House and is elected by only those in his Congressional district and not state-wide as was Brown.

[DainBramage]

My take is that the voters of Mass have been tired of Kennedy for a long time but just assumed there was no chance he could lose so they didnt vote.

When they saw the chance to actually stop the "machine" they jumped on it.

50 frigging years is too long for anyone to hold one seat!

This is a mandate for term limits IMO. Barney Frank,John Kerry ...beware!

[republicangel]

I don’t think they were talking about gerrymandering.

[Cronos]

My take is that the voters of Mass have been tired of Kennedy for a long time but just assumed there was no chance he could lose so they didnt vote.

Quite true -- should voting be made mandatory like in Australia?