Lexington And Concord Revisited - The Brown Upset and What It Means

To me, it is a delicious irony that the first shots of the new Revolution should be fired at the same site where the original shots were fired 234 years ago.It would have been almost unimaginable only a short time ago.

Any way you slice it, this is the start of something big.

President Obama made a major tactical error in coming down to endorse Coakely and explicitly making her candidacy what amounted to a referendum on his presidency. Prez Zero's fanboys are working overtime to spin it, but all one has to do is to look at the ad Obama made for Coakely for Organizing America, the logistical and financial support the Obama White House gave her and look at the speech he made for her at the rallies in Massachusetts.

Given his inflated sense of himself, Obama felt that all he had to do to put across an elitist, clueless and unqualified candidate was to show up and watch the sheep fall in line behind him, just like in the old days. He couldn't have been more wrong.

This was a pushback at the Obama administration's doctrinaire, out of touch policies, the crooked deals and Chicago-on-the- Potomac, and even the more honest Democrat voices admit it and are urging that the Donkeys take the lesson to heart and make some changes.

That's fairly unlikely. Obama has already signaled that he plans to be a lot more 'combative' about getting his agenda through:

President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.

“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”…

There won’t be any grand proclamation that “the era of Big Government is over” — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.

“The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall,” a presidential adviser said. “The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’”

You can expect to see this president trash talking quite outrageously when it comes to this years' State of the Union speech, due out January 27th. I could almost write a critique of the coming speech in advance.

Obama will blame George W. Bush, of course. That tired tune still resonates with the true believers although recent numbers suggest that it isn't anything like the hit song it was a year ago.

He will blame 'obstructionists' the Republicans and 'the old politics as usual' for his mishaps. And expect him to do the class war dance, blaming 'the banks', 'Wall Street' 'big insurers' and 'the special interests' for everything he can't lay at Bush's feet.

I wouldn't even be surprised to hear him make a call for fiscal responsibility...after he and the Democrats quadrupled the nation's debt like an out-of control teen at the mall armed with daddy's credit card.

Hopefully the GOP will have someone respond properly, mentioning the president's bogus stimulus deal that created no jobs and mostly went to pay off his political allies, 'cash for clunkers', the bribing of the Senate with literally billions of our tax dollars, the attempted nationalization of huge sectors of the economy,and the blank checks for Fannie and Freddie. Or perhaps the strange avoidance of any criticism or reigning in of Obama's Wall Street pals at Goldman Sachs and the president's corrupt deal with Big Pharma could be mentioned. Or the Obama deficit, and the fact that Obama has spent more in one year than than the ee-vil BushHitler spent in eight....just for starters.

I doubt they would, but perhaps the GOP could prevail on Rush Limbaugh to do the honors. That would definitely be must-see TV.

As for Obamacare, I think the president plans to shove it through no matter what. He's simply made it too much a part of his agenda and made too many deals that have to be paid off somehow to shelve it or start from scratch. Since it's unlikely he's going to be able to unduly delay Scott Brown's being seated in the Senate, the obvious tactics are likely to be either ping ponging, where the House wholly endorses the Senate bill without any changes or reconciliation, where the Donkeys can simply lock the Republicans out of the room, make certain superficial changes in budgeting and pass the bill by simple majorities.

Both are possible, and both have a number of difficulties.

There are a number of 'progressives' that dislike the Baucus bill intensely because it lacks guv'mint run healthcare,and many more of the slightly less insane Blue Dogs are worried because they already know that the folks back home hate the whole idea.
Nancy Pelosi manged to get the 218 votes she needed because one GOP congressman, Joseph Cao, allowed himself to be bribed and because the anti-abortion language of the Stupac amendment passed.

However, the Senate bill lacks the anti-abortion provisions of the Stupac Amendment and also taxes the so-called 'cadillac heath plans' heavily. Obama had made a deal with the Unions to effectively exempt their plans from these taxes, but that backroom deal would be difficult to include if there's a pingpong or reconciliation, andthe same is true of the anti-abortion language. Donkeys who depend on union support will be hard pressed to vote yes to the Senate bill, and Rep Stupak says that he has a dozen no votes if the abortion language remains cut from the legislation. So it might be tough getting to 218 in the House this time.However, it's not impossible.

I wrote some time ago that if Prez Zero shoves Obamacare through Congress, that would be the one single thing that could lose them their majorities in both houses. The way things are going now, they might just lose them anyway...Mess NBC, of all places, had Zero's approval ratings at a whopping 48%, and remember, that's Mess NBC where they've been known to oversample Democrats by 15%.

No matter what ends up happening with ObamaCare, other crusades I expect Obama to embark on shortly are card check, to end secret ballots in Union elections ( after all, they didn't spend a quarter of a billion dollars to elect him for nothing) 'punishing' the banks, would should do wonders for the economy and amnesty for illegal aliens, AKA 'comprehensive immigration reform'. With a 10% official unemployment rate ( more like 17% or 18% in real numbers) el amnestia ought to go over about as well as ObamaCare has.For all the hope n' change rhetoric, President Obama doesn't strike me as the kind of person who is capable of actually dropping his agenda just because the majority of the American people obviously want no part of it.

As for the Republicans, hopefully tonight has clued them in that they need to run on principles,values and populism, something I suppose you could call the Palin formula. Scott Brown ended up getting $500 thousand from the RNC under the table once he had done all the spadework himself, but he was smart enough not to be identified with the GOP establishment and they were smart enough to go along with it.

Brown succeeded with a small government, conservative Reaganesque platform that energized people like no Republican has since Sarah Palin. A guy in his truck almost overnight became a symbol of people tired of business as usual and disillusioned with the Wizard of O and Chicago-on-the Potomac.

Tonight's victory is very likely to spur a lot of Democrat retirements and open up more seats, and it may very well make some of the more idiotic incumbents ( Babs Boxer, I'm looking at you) amazingly vulnerable to the right candidates. The GOP needs a lot less of the same old same old and a lot more Scott Browns, and they're out there.

We have, after all, a country to save.

Oh, and happy one year anniversary, Mr. President.Best of luck on the golf course.