Massachusetts: Referendum On Ineptitude
January 20, 2010
Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), still wearing
the blinders Democrats seem not to be able to shed, declared that insofar
as concerns with the health care bill factored into Scott Brown's victory
in the Massachusetts Senatorial election last night, it was because "the
people of Massachusetts were . . . upset about provisions in the Senate
bill."
Not a word to indicate that anyone in Congress or the
administration recognizes that the so-called Louisiana Purchase
the $300 million pledged to Mary Landrieu's state in exchange for her
health care vote is coming to resemble the Lusitania Purchase.
And no seeming acknowledgment that the special payoff to Ben Nelson
aka the Nebraska Fiaska in exchange for his vote might be viewed
as unseemly by the broader American electorate, even as Nelson tries desperately
to give the money back in the wake of his plunging approval ratings among
the state's voters.
Still, with the Democrat ship of state going down, Barack
Obama appears ready to double down. Rumblings out of the White House indicate
the President is ready to get feisty with it. And Howard Dean, always
spoiling for a stupid fight, concurs, noting, with the blindered candor
that has come to characterize Dems' calling card of late, that current
health care legislation is simply too watered down to make any meaningful
impact. By "meaningful impact" it is assumed he means "drive
the U.S. several trillion dollars deeper into debt and cement this administration's
reputation as the most fiscally irresponsible one in history."
Of course, Dems seem to be unaware that Americans are
also more than a bit perturbed by the fact that no one, certainly not
Dems themselves, knows what the hell is in the health care package they've
been wrangling about for lo these past seven months or so. And no Democrat
seems to this moment to understand that Americans are serious in their
opposition to unfettered Federal spending and further uninvited intrusion
into the decisions that rightfully belong to them and not to their elected
federal officials.
The Massachusetts election was more than merely a referendum
on Obama's health care agenda. Brown himself said that when Coakley made
her "no terrorists in Afghanistan" gaffe, he and his staff realized
that terrorism was still on the minds of many Americans. Democrats still
are unable to admit that there have been two terrorist attacks on the
United States in just the past few months. While Major Hasan's terrorism
resulted in 13 deaths, the tighty-whitey bomber, fortunately, failed to
detonate his explosive device. The Christmas Day incident came on the
heels of the disturbing late Christmas Eve vote to approve the Senate
health care bill, and both events occurred while the President was vacationing
in Hawaii and, for all practical purposes, incommunicado. When you realize
that the current administration can't even keep party crashers out of
the White House, let alone terrorists off of our airliners and military
bases, you begin to get a sense of what Americans are up in arms about.
And when you parse the administration's inability to mount even a coherent
and timely response to these very real and in one tragic event,
deadly threats, you realize that the Massachusetts election was
a referendum on ineptude.
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