Pollster Scott Rasmussen offers post-vote poll indicators of why Scott Brown is on his way to the Senate. Key metrics: (1) Coakley won handily among voters who labeled health care their top issue; (2) Brown won narrowly among voters who put the economy first, and won huge on voters picking taxes, terrorism and deficits. The WSJ editors add high-cost RomneyCare--highest in the US--has a key voting factor. Voter turnout, at 2.25M, was epic for an off-year special election--75 percent of the 3M turnout for the 2008 Presidential election.
Politics super-maven Michael Barone adds further insight:
The state that in the last four presidential elections has voted on average 61 percent Democratic and 33 percent Republican. That's a bigger margin than in any other state.
George Will sees a massive repudiation of runaway liberalism in the MA result:
The 2008 elections gave liberals the curse of opportunity, and they have used it to reveal themselves ruinously. The protracted health care debacle has highlighted this fact: Some liberals consider the legislation's unpopularity a reason to redouble their efforts to inflict it on Americans who, such liberals think, are too benighted to understand that their betters know best. The essence of contemporary liberalism is the illiberal conviction that Americans, in their comprehensive incompetence, need minute supervision by government, which liberals believe exists to spare citizens the torture of thinking and choosing.
Last week, trying to buttress the bovine obedience of most House Democrats, Obama assured them that if the bill becomes law, "the American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like." Suddenly?
If the Democrats' congressional leaders are determined to continue their kamikaze flight to incineration, they will ignore Massachusetts' redundant evidence of public disgust. They will leaven their strategy of briberies with procedural cynicism -- delaying certification of Massachusetts' Senate choice, or misusing "reconciliation" to evade Senate rules, or forcing the House to swallow its last shred of pride in order to rush the Senate bill to the president's desk. Surely any such trickery would be one brick over a load for some hitherto servile members of the Democratic House and Senate caucuses, giving them an excuse to halt their party's Gadarene rush toward the precipice.
WSJ pundit Dan Henninger fingers a culprit: JFK, whom no one else (myself included) thought of. Yes, THAT JFK, the tax-cutter, national security hawk, DH fingers JFK's Executive Order 10988 (1962). EO 10988 unionized the federal workforce, and thus gave rise to the militant public-sector unions who milked taxpayers for the past 40 years and fund liberal candidates. Rising populist anger comes from taxpayers tired of high taxes and poor services.
NRO legal ace Andy McCarthy notes that Brown's internal polling showed that voter opposition to trials for terror suspects was a powerful issue driving voters to Brown:
The laws of war are the rule of law. They are not a suspension of the Constitution. They are the Constitution operating in wartime. The Framers understood that there would be wars against enemies of the United States — it is stated explicitly in the Constitution’s treason clause (Art. III, Sec. 3). The American people understand that we have enemies, even if Washington sees them as political “engagement” partners waiting to happen. Americans also grasp that war is a political and military challenge that the nation has to win, not a judicial proceeding in which your enemies are presumed innocent. The rule of law is not and has never been the rule of lawyers — especially lawyers we can’t vote out of office when they say we must let trained terrorists move in next door.
As for privacy, Americans are not as self-absorbed as ACLU staffers — who, by the way, reserve the right to search your bags before you enter their offices. If you fret about privacy, it’s Obamacare that ought to give you sleepless nights. The lefties who’ve told us for nearly 40 years since Roe v. Wade that the government can’t come between you and your doctor are now saying you shouldn’t be able to get to a doctor except through the government, which will decide if you’re worth treating — that is an invasion of privacy. Penetrating enemy communications, on the other hand, is what Americans think of as self-defense. It’s what we’ve done in every war in our history. It’s what common sense says we must do to win. And when America goes to war, Americans want to win.
A WSJ/NBC News poll shows two startling shifts since 44 took office: (1) voters are now evenly split as to which party they prefer to have run Congress, with likely voters leaning GOP; (2) President Obama's approve/disapprove rating crossed in December, with disapproval now higher. Had MA promptly called for a special senatorial election last August had held it in October or November, instead of delaying so that appointee Paul Kirk could carry ObamaCare over the top ObamaCare would be law, as no GOP candidate likely would have won Teddy Kennedy's seat back then.
Newt Gingrich offers nine lessons from Brown's win. Among them: contest races everywhere, and be positive & issues-oriented. My favorite: Trucks beat lobbyists.
ObamaCare in its present form is now comatose. President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) both said on TV that there will be no Senate vote on health care until Senator-Elect Scott Brown is seated. NRO reports that House liberals told Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Pluto) that the House will not pass the current Senate ObamaCare bill. The New York Times reports that President Obama is considering a stripped-down health care bill in order to win some GOP support. NRO reports that even Senator Ben Nelson (D-Cupidity) has had a Damascus conversion and will not support a Democrat-only bill.
Another casualty of Brown's triumph may well have been President Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), Erroll Southers; Southers withdrew his nomination Wednesday. Giving terrorists the same rights as American citizens is an issue that will cost Democrats dearly this fall, if they stay their present course.
Bottom Line. Although RomneyCare is now unpopular in MA, likely that reflects concern with cost; with universal coverage in MA--97 percent--RomneyCare is the nation's most expensive state plan. Ardent supporters of health care, however, still back ObamaCare; the GOP has to take advantage of the upending of ObamaCare to offer a cohesive agenda for health care reform. National security remains a Democratic weakness that candidates must surmount by showing voters they are strong on such issues.
Above all, the MA vote reaffirms that America is a centrist country, rejecting policies perceived as too far left or right, depending upon which excess is salient in a given election cycle. And voters increasingly demand performance from both parties, and will toss out anyone perceived as not performing. Put simply, neither party can afford to delude itself that a grand realignment is in order anytime soon. The center of gravity in American politics is occupied by the independent voter.
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