From GOProud:

Next Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts will go to the polls for a special election to replace U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (D). Recent polling shows Republican State Senator Scott Brown in a virtual tie with Democrat Martha Coakley.

“As the polls get closer and closer, Democrats and their allies on the left get more and more desperate. Democrats are unable to defend their record on taxes, spending, the economy, job creation, healthcare or the global war on terror, so instead they turn to smears, distortions and name-calling,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud.

“In the last few weeks the gay left has slandered Scott Brown, claiming that he is ‘anti-gay.’ The truth is that Scott Brown has said that same-sex marriage is settled law in Massachusetts. Scott Brown has also said they he believes each state should decide its marriage laws – the exact same position taken by President Barack Obama.”

“What has 60 Democratic Senators delivered for gay families so far? Unemployment over 10%, spending spiraling out of control, a super majority bent on expanding discriminatory government-run healthcare, and an administration unwilling to confront the spread of radical anti-gay Islam. Nothing would send a clearer message to the current leadership in Washington about the unhappiness that all Americans, including gay and lesbian Americans, have with the direction in Washington then a win by Scott Brown.”

You know, leading Democrats from former President Bill Clinton on down are assuring us backwards and forwards, inside and out that current polls notwithstanding that should the Democrats’ health care overhaul pass, the American people will all of a sudden have a great epiphany and realize how wrong they were.  Support for greater government control over our the health care will increase and Democrats’ electoral prospects will grow.

Chris Dodd may even change his retirement plans.

So, if Democrats are so bullish about potential future support of health care, why then is Martha Coakley, in her litany of attacks of Scott Brown, refusing to fault him for his promise to be the 41st vote to block Obamacare in the Senate?

In the debate last night, it was the “moderator” who raised the issue of Brown’s opposition to the Democrats’ pet issue while Coakley used her one chance to ask Brown a question to bait him on abortion.  He didn’t bite.

Should she win, she’ll go to Washington to help pass a bill which major consequences for our health care system, but which was not central to her campaign.  Just one more sign that Scott Brown is the real choice for changing the way things are done in our nation’s capital.

Folks, I wish this was a joke. A colleague of mine witnessed truly bizarre behavior on US Airways Flight 1453 from Washington Reagan National to Charlotte, NC this morning.

Shortly after takeoff, a young Middle Eastern-looking man in First Class (seat 2A) covered himself with a hooded jacket and blanket, dropped his pants and appeared to go to town.

My friend believes that an air marshal was on board. But I reported the incident to a TSA supervisor at Charlotte-Douglas and he didn’t seem to care and told me to call the airline itself.

I’m not sure what about these events today is most disturbing.

Instead of following Martha Coakley into the gutter with her nasty attack ad (which happens to misspell the state she seeks to represent), Scott Brown makes a positive case for his candidacy:

Just love how he turns the Democrats’ 2008 rhetoric on them. He is the true independent voice in this race, having held true to small government principles and stood up against the big-spending policies of the majority party in the Bay State.

I trust he’ll do the same in Washington.

(H/t to Barone for the ad & to Geraghty for an ad with the embed code, with the latter noting Brown’s “ad has only 23 fewer views than Coakley’s attack ad.”  And Coakley’s ad has been up longer.)

At the gym yesterday, it seemed that half the time I looked up at CNN (and this over a period of an hour and a half), they were discussing Harry Reid’s comments about the hue of the president’s skin.  I have to say I was surprised at how much attention this remark has been getting, with Democrats going into overdrive to do what his Nevada constituents show no intention of doing, saving his political career.

In so doing, they’re revealing just what kind of politicians they are–the very kind that Barack Obama ran against last fall.  They’re using this as another chance to bash Republicans, accusing them of insensitivity on matters of race or some such.  They might come across as more sincere if they just left it as a party leader who regretted his poor choice of words.  But, they just can’t control themselves.  Attacking Republicans is what they do.  I mean, heck, so obsessed are they with Sarah Palin that a Democratic operative goes into overdrive when Sarah Palin says nothing about a particular Senate race.

Personally, I think Reid will survive this, but the whole hullabaloo will serve to further damaging the Democratic Party “brand” as it again exposes the sheer hypocrisy of the left-wing rush to brand Republicans racist.  I grant there’s much merit to the contention that what Harry Reid said was far less damning that what Trent Lott said, but no one call tell me with a straight face that if a Republican politician had said such a thing, particularly one who had once faulted the intelligence of an African-American Supreme Court Justice, he would have been spared the wrath of the race-conscious media.

I predict the furor will die down in a couple of days, with Reid keeping his job, but with his reputation–and that of his party–further tarnished.  Not so much because of these remarks, but because of his party’s manner in handling them.

Image counts for a lot in politics.  One well-timed statement can turn an election.  A gaffe can destroy a political career.  Because Ronald Reagan explicitly refused to exploit for political purposes his opponent’s youth and inexperience, he prevented that Democrat from winning any state beyond his home state in their fall 1984 match-up.

Had George Allen not uttered a bizarre word whose meaning is unclear to most Virginians, he would still be representing that state in the Senate today. Scott Brown last night may well have made the statement that will allow him to serve in the house were Allen once served.

Yes, the people in the Bay State revere the Kennedy name, but they surely don’t revere it so much that, like the voice of the Beltway establishment, they believe a Senate seat belongs to a particular family. It’s not just that Scott Brown said that, it’s the way he said it.

This is not to say that I’m convinced he’s going to win one week from today, but that last night, he certainly increased his chances.

With the first negative ad of the Massachusetts Senate race, Martha Coakley likens Rush Limbaugh to a Nazi and leaves out one important issue that her Republican opponent opposes.

Can you guess what it is? And what it says about the pet issue of the man she seeks to succeed. Oops, I gave away the answer, so I’d better add it in as one of the post’s categories.

(Via Red Mass Group.)

And don’t forget to see how Coakley’s slide in the polls has caused national Democrats to obsess over Sarah Palin’s silence.  ”How humiliating,” John Hinderaker writes, “for the Democrats! Sarah Palin can twist them into knots simply by doing…nothing.”

UPDATE:  Scott Brown is already fighting back with a new ad, but he’s not following the Democrat into the gutter, he’s following in the footsteps of a successful Democratic campaign against an old kind of politics.  Given this Republican’s record, it doesn’t much look like he’ll follow in that Democrat’s footsteps once elected.

I took some time off from blogging and my dissertation yesterday for a second visit to the Borders on La Cieneg.  The bookstore has slashed prices (4o% off on books) as it prepares to liquidate its stock, even its fixtures, before it closes its doors this coming Saturday, January 16.

Given my bibliophilia, I may even return again, expecting the management to reduce rates even further in the store’s final days.  Today, I just “collected” books on CD as I usually buy a new one every time I prepare to head up to San Francisco to visit the most important person in the state.  After my purchases today, I won’t have to for some time.   Today, they had reduced most titles to $3.99, then discounted that price by 70%, meaning you could take home an audio book for $1.20.

I bought about 15 for a total cost less than I normally pay for one book, plus I tossed 7 or 8 copies of a reading of the Gordon translation of the greatest poem written in the first century of the Common Era into my shopping cart, wanting to share this great story with my friends.  They can hear of the exploits of one of the greatest heroes of all time as they navigate Los Angeles traffic.

Oh and one audio CD that wasn’t selling, even at $1.20, Scott McClellan’s What Happened, a title which has long since outlived its publisher’s purpose.  Obama’s Democrats notwithstanding, Bush-bashing no longer sells.

With his announcement today ”that he is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Byron Dorgan“, John Hoeven moves a seat once considered safely Democrat to safe Republican.

Methinks the good Governor won’t have to campaign much, given his popularity in the Peace Garden State.  Perhaps, he could help his party replace the state’s Democratic Congressman with a representative more in line with the state’s partisan and philosophical inclinations.

And make sure to check out Michael Barone assessment of why this Republican state has been sending mostly Democrats to Congress for the past thirty years.

Just look how he parried the way the voice of the Washington establishment defined the Senate seat once held by Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner.  That should resonate with voters in the Bay State:

H/t: Instapundit who got it from the Conservative Blogress Diva Regent.

NB: I didn’t see the debate, so maybe Gergen showed an inclination toward Republican ideas when questioning Mrs. Coakley, but having watched the question now twice, it sure seemed to me that this “moderator” believed the winner of this election owed it to Ted Kennedy to vote exactly as the Democrat would have on health care.

UPDATE:  The more I watch this video, the more I wonder if it could define the last week of the race and could contribute to a Brown upset.  He just looked good.  And I feel that my contribution matching our readers’ donation was money well spent, very well spent.

UP-UPDATE:  Looks like Gergen tossed Coakley mainly softballs, saving the tough questions for Brown.  Guess it’s just because he, like Katie Couric, expects more of Republicans:

Near the end of the debate, he had two questions for Brown and Coakley each. After putting Brown on the spot over Roe v. Wade and “climate change,” Gergen turned to the Democrat with his hardest hitting questions of the night.

“Do you think it was right to insist on three people being at the debate?” Gergen asked Coakley. Yes, she did.

He followed up with this doozy: “As you look back on the campaign, do you have any second thoughts on how the campaign has unfolded?”

Or maybe he’s still auditioning for a White House job.

I had a flash of brilliance over the weekend. I know how to make Obama pay attention to terrorists and dictators threatening America.

Let’s put golf courses in Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq & Venezuela.

He might just be interested in threats against our nation if that were the case!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In the past few months, Scott Brown has run the kind of campaign that should define all Republican campaigns.  He has focused on fiscal issues and has made competitive a race in a state which hasn’t elected a Republican to the House since 1994 and to the Senate since 1972, the same year it was the only state in the union to vote for George McGovern for President.

He may be a bit more centrist than Bruce or I, but on the issues which matter most to Americans right now, even the citizens of his own “blue” state, Brown is right on the money.  He thinks Congress is just spending too much money while his opponent, the incredibly well-educated Martha Coakley, would just be another vote for the spending spree begun under the current Administration.

And she’d vote for the health care overhaul which only 41% of likely voters in the Bay State support.  Meanwhile, Brown says he’ll be the 41st vote against Obamacare.  Left-wing groups are going into overdrive to hold the seat for the Democrats, knowing they need Coakley’s vote to increase the size of the federal government and the control it exercises over our lives. Brown would be a vote to check the government’s growth and a champion of returning power to the people, just patriots from his state  who, 230-odd years ago, bore the brunt of the King’s tyranny.

Honored by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), Brown understands the concerns of those entrepreneurs who form the backbone of our economy and who create the bulk of new jobs.  He believes the “stimulus” bill only increased the size of the federal government without creating any such jobs and has decried the “historic amount of debt we are passing on to our children and grandchildren“.

More than anything, we appreciate that Brown has kept his focus on bread-and-butter issues and steered clear of social issues.  Let’s hope that other Republicans follow his lead.

If you live in the Bay State, make sure to vote for Brown on Tuesday, January 19.  If you know people who live there, call them and tell them it’s imperative they get to the polls to vote for this good man.  And join Bruce and me in making a contribution to his campaign.  They’re trying to raise $500,000 today, so give what you can as soon as you can.  Bruce and I will match every GayPatriot contribution up to a total of $500.  So, let us know what you gave so we can figure out how to divide up the promised match!

UPDATE: As of 5:31 PST (8:31 GayPatriot blog time), Brown had raised $918,672.81.  If he raises just 81,327.19 in the next 3 1/2 hours, he’ll have doubled his initial goal.

UP-UPDATE:  Holy Cow, he’s at $1,303,302.50

CUBAN DOCTORS defecting to the U.S. via Venezuela.

Maybe he’ll include this tidbit in the extended edition of this movie.

In just nine days, we’ll be commemorating the first anniversary of an event long awaited on the left side of the political aisle:  the return of George W. Bush to Texas.  This departure, however, has not prevented Democrats from bringing up their all-purpose bogeyman every time our nation faces a crisis, his successor makes an error or when they just plain need something to complain about.

Obama may say the buck stops with him, but for the better part of his first year in office, he’s been blaming Bush for the toughness of the challenges he fought so hard to face.

Well, our friend Sonicfrog, perhaps in anticipation of his fifth blogiversary, points out that Democrats are making this obsession their electoral strategy, linking John Fund’s piece on how Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen plans to “attack Republicans for wanting to restore the discredited Bush era.”  Funny, our friend notes, quoting the Washington Post how similar that strategy is to the Republican strategy in 2006 :

The message that Bush and others are sending to alienated supporters is that, no matter how upset they have been about various policies or political missteps over the past couple of years, life would be far worse under the Democrats. They name liberal lawmakers who would take charge of key committees and warn conservatives that taxes would go up and protection against terrorists would go down.

We all know how well that strategy worked out.  But, “even more damning,” Sonic writes, “many on the right will now be able to say they were right.” (more…)

When then-Congressman Barbara Boxer and a handful of her Democratic female colleagues heard uncorroborated allegations that a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court had talked about pubic hairs on a soft drink can with a female co-worker, they marched across Capitol Hill, protesting the Senate’s treatment of that woman (who could not back up her allegations).  Seven years later, when a female nurse accused a Democratic president of rape, Mrs. Boxer showed no interest in the accusation–or the media’s treatment of Mrs. Broaddrick or any other woman leveling accusations against Bill Clinton (the aforementioned Democrat).

She didn’t raise a ruckus when her fellow partisans trashed those women, even though each and every one of them (unlike Ms. Hill) could corroborate their allegations.

No wonder Democrats, who urged Republicans to “drive out Trent Lott” as Senate GOP Leader in 2002 for his racially insensitive praise of Strom Thurmond at the latter’s 100th birthday party, do not ask their party to drive Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Mr. Crumpit) for his bizarre and patronizing comment about Obama’s skin color.  The reason they’re not so concerned:  ”but Lott was a Republican. Reid is a Democrat.”

Guess they just hold Republicans to higher standards.

Some might say that given his history with the segregationist group “Council of Conservative Citizens,” Lott’s statement had been part of pattern.  Well, Reid too has a pattern of denigrating intelligent African-Americans, having disparaged the writing skills of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Nowadays, more often than not Democrats (and their allies in the media) bring up racism, sexual harassment and “homophobia” not so much out of concern for the supposed victims, but as a means to attack Republicans as intolerant.  Note how often Republicans are tarred as “anti-gay” for holding the same position on gay marriage as the Democratic President of the United States. (more…)

In his report from Scott Brown for Senate headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts, Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson takes note of an issue on the minds of Massachuesetts voters:

There also was a lot of animosity surrounding the announcement that the Democrats would delay Brown’s certification if he won. People were calling in about that issue, and it was brought up on phone calls by the voters (the issue was not on the call script).

The attempt to delay certification has the potential to be a defining issue in the campaign because it crystallizes in voters’ minds everything that is wrong with politics.

I agree that this delay could well become a defining issue for exactly the reason Jacobson offers.

On Friday, Brian McNiff spokesman for Massachusetts’ Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, said certification “would take a while“:

Because it’s a federal election, [w]e’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.

And until that certification comes, appointed Senator Paul Kirk could vote for cloture on health care, allowing the unpopular bill (even in the Bay State) to pass.  And while the Democratic official threatens to delay certification in this ace, in 2007, his office did not delay the swearing in of Niki Tsongas, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives an special election that October.  She was sworn in just two days after her election.  And that wasn’t a federal election?

It’s not just the delay in certification which hurts Brown’s Democratic opponent Martha Coakley.  She’s heading down to Washington on Tuesday “for a lobbyist-infested fundraiser,” which Michael Barone believes is “not a good move given the anti-lobbyist feeling that’s so evident this year (and which Obama played on during the 2008 campaign).” (more…)

An AP article today serves as a reminder of anecdotes many of us have heard (and others experienced) of friends, family members and acquaintances taking pay cuts in order to keep their jobs:

It’s one of the bleak realities of the economic recovery: Even as more employers are starting to hire, the new jobs typically pay less than the ones that were lost.

So, it’s not just our already employed friends working for less money, it’s also the newly employed.

But, while private sector employers are slashing pay checks, it remains boom time for government employees, even in cash-strapped states like California.  On the last state of the year just concluded, a state judge in the Golden State

. . . ruled that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had abused his discretion in ordering furloughs of state workers, dealing a blow to the administration’s efforts to cope with the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch said the administration must halt the furloughs for workers represented by three unions, including Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents 95,000 state employees.

The Governor had ordered “most state employees to take three days off a month without pay as the state faced a massive budget deficit.”  Even a former Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly finds that “80 percent” of the state’s budget deficits is “due to employee costs.“  And, as George Will notes today, it’s not just the cost of current employees:

It took years for servile liberalism to turn the state into what [William] Voegeli calls a “unionocracy,” run by and for unionized public employees, such as public safety employees who can retire at 50 and receive 90 percent of the final year’s pay for life.

A first step toward righting the budget woes of the Golden State would be for the legislature to do for state employees what private sector employees have done for theirs:  slash salaries.  And while our legislators are at it, they should slash pensions for public sector retirees as well and prevent able-bodied retirees from receiving their pensions until they’re 65 (or 70).

Is there anyone left in the white Democratic Senate Leadership that isn’t a former KKK Grand Dragon or a KKK-wannabee?

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (DEMOCRAT-NV) in 2008:

Obama had an advantage because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect” — until he wanted to use it.

Recall what brought down then-Senate Majority Leader (REPUBLICAN-MS) Trent Lott:

Trent Lott resigned his post as Majority Leader in 2002 after praising Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential candidacy during a birthday celebration for the 100-year-old South Carolinian.

That was it.  Lott was praising an old man, who yes, was a racist about the same time that a majority of Americans were.  But Lott was kicked to the curb, because he is a Republican.  Democrats, meanwhile, have fostered racism throughout the past 30 years and their Senate Leadership (at least) is chock full of ‘em.

And of course Obama accepted Reid’s apology — he is a Democrat.  But recall what Obama said after the Don Imus racism controversy:

“He didn’t just cross the line,” Obama said. “He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women — who I hope will be athletes — that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It’s one that I’m not interested in supporting.”

To be a Republican racist is a mortal sin, to be a Democrat racist means you are the leaders and statesmen of the Party.  Disgusting.

HARRY REID SHOULD GO NOW.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In Ohio’s Second Congressional District, adjacent to the one where I grew up and where two of my brothers currently reside, George W. Bush took 64% of the vote in the 2004 presidential election, two points higher than Barack Obama’s performance in the Bay State in the fall of 2008.  Nine months after W’s romp in that district, there was a special election when Rob Portman, the district’s Congressman, stepped down to take up the post of U.S Trade Representative.  The Republican nominee, Jean Schmidt barely edged out attorney and Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett (51.6% to 48.4%).

While a weak candidate (but decent person), Schmidt has managed to hold on to the seat by the skin of her teeth in the two succeeding elections.

In the 1995 special, the enthusiasm and energy was clearly on Hackett’s side.  The left-wing blogs were clearly energized for him as the conservative blogs today are energized about the candidacy of Scott Brown in the Bay State.  Brown may well be winning “the battle of the blogosphere”, but, a Paul Hackett learned, “That’s not where elections are settled“. Still, it is “something.”

This is not to say that Brown will suffer Hackett’s fate, but to offer a cautionary tale.

Would Hackett have fared any better had the special election been held after Hurricane Katrina when Bush’s poll numbers began their irreversible decline and the left became increasingly energized?  We don’t know, but we do know that the energy right now is clearly on the right, even in the Bay State.  But that’s not always enough to win elections.

Still, should Brown make this a close race, it could well signal a coming Republican tide as the 2005 race in Ohio-2 was a “harbinger of the 2006 midterm elections nationally.”

[GP Ed. Note: I'm wielding the power of the Editor today to re-post this awesome cartoon.  Thanks, Sarjex!!]

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