The Message of Massachusetts (A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit.)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 01-19-10 | The Wall Street Journal Editorial Staff

[GOP_Lady]

Whether or not Republican Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts, the special Senate election has already shaken up American politics. The close race to replace Ted Kennedy, liberalism's patron saint, shows that voters are rebelling even in the bluest of states against the last year's unbridled pursuit of partisan liberal governance.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of President Obama's Inaugural, and it's worth recalling the extraordinary political opportunity he had a year ago. An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities and faced a dispirited, unpopular GOP. With monetary policy stimulus already flowing, Democrats were poised to get the political credit for the inevitable economic recovery.

Twelve months later, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President's, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government, and a Republican could pick up a Senate seat in a state with no GOP Members of Congress and that Mr. Obama carried by 26 points.

What explains this precipitous political fall? Democrats and their media allies attribute it to GOP obstructionism, though Republicans lack the votes to stop anything by themselves. Or they blame their own Blue Dogs, who haven't stopped or even significantly modified any legislation of consequence.

Or they blame an economic agenda that wasn't populist or liberal enough because it didn't nationalize banks and spend even more on "stimulus." It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt, that another $1 trillion would have made all the difference. But that's the latest left-wing theme.

[GOP_Lady]

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[usnavycdr]

If they could the DemoRATS would blame the people for being too stupid to know “what is best for them.” In reality, you can fool most of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool most of the people all the time. The great people of our country who care about our future have awoken after smelling the sh#!

[usual suspect]

Thank you God, for sending us all of these jerks, so that we might learn from them, to never let them have power again
Amen

[refermech]

Great editorial. Nails it. Americans don’t want their solutions. Epic failure!

[Lurker]

And somewhere in the depths of Hell Satan is turning the soul of Ted Kennedy on a spit, cackling, and applying more marinade.

[maggief]

btt

Good read.

EXCERPT

These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama’s de facto cabinet. The nearby photos show some of the most powerful, clockwise from the top right:

• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn’t mention carbon.

• Wisconsin’s David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.

• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.

• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the “public option.”

• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he’s from California.

• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.

[The Raven]

Excerpt:

These committee chairmen are all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.

Yeah, I guess when you look at it that way.... ...can we put it back now?

[Liz]

Thanks for the headsup, mags.

No wonder Brown is surging-----that list of losers explains why voters are turning against Obama and the rest of the Dems.

Voters' loathing has never been more apparent. And understandably so. They have endured the insolence of Ohaha, Bwaney Fwank, Pelosi, and Harry Reid as they sneered at tea partiers......voters saw their condescending attitudes to anyone who dared oppose the healthcare atrocity.

Now these officeholders must bear the brunt of voters' discontent. The MA election uncovers the loathing of Obama by a LOT of voters." Even though delusional Obamatons have managed to convince themselves that this is only "isolated extremism" by a bunch of tea partiers.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Obama comes across as incredibly arrogant and condescending, and barely conceals his loathing and disdain for America and for the citizenry. People not only dislike Obama's policies on taxes, terror and healthcare.........they don't like him.

[hoosiermama]

A pox on all of their houses.