A Noticeable Drop-Off In Quality

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_01/022005.php

A NOTICEABLE DROP-OFF IN QUALITY.... Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) offered an interesting peek into his worldview last night during his victory speech.

" In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

"Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country."

Perhaps now would be a good time to note that this is a Senate seat once held by John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John Quincy Adams, among others.

It now belongs to Scott Brown -- a conservative who supports torture, opposes Wall Street accountability, supports more tax cuts for the wealthy, opposes economic recovery efforts, opposes Ted Kennedy's life's work on health care reform, and doubts that global climate change is the result of human activity.

And says things like, "In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them."

It's admittedly tiresome to hear any political observer say, "In the good old days...." Those days were rarely as good as anyone remembers, and prominent thinkers of the day have been complaining about the next generation being less impressive than the last for as long as we've had the printed word.

But a once-storied Senate seat that belonged to Adams and Kennedy is now filled by a dim-witted wingnut, and that's a real shame -- for Massachusetts, for the Senate, and for all of us.

—Steve Benen

[dkf]

1. Coakely didn't fill those shoes very well either.

Sad.

[pnwmom]

8. Coakley never said that accused terrorists shouldn't have attorneys.

What he's saying strikes at the very foundation of our legal system.

Under his system, anyone could be accused of terrorism and then denied an attorney. He doesn't belong in the Senate, period.

[Mojorabbit]

11. I wasn't to impressed with her work here

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2010/01/sifting-through-the-martha-coakley-controversy.html

Neither candidates were fit to tie his shoes.

[Mojorabbit]

13. dupe

[fasttense]

2. Remember this statement made by the Obama administration about 10 days ago?

White House aides believe a lot of the liberal angst about health care will go away once the president actually signs a bill. And to the extent that the Democrats have a problem motivating their core voters, they've got time to fix it.

"We're not overly concerned about these things, first and foremost because there isn't an election tomorrow, not an election the next day," says Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director.

Oops there goes another election.

[Lasher]

7. That's gotta be one of the dumbest quotes on record.

Pfeiffer will wear that one for the rest of his life.

[Democrat_in_Houston]

3. No woman has ever filled those shoes, either.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Good point. In the senate or the governor's office. Any house members female?

[Lasher]

4. Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left

Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/18/rahm-emanuel-dont-worry-about-the-left/

But there were plenty of liberals left to lose. 22% of MA Democrats voted for Brown.

[pnwmom]

9. You want us to believe that those 22% who voted for the right-winger were LIBERALS?

Far more likely is that they were what at one time would have been called "Reagan Democrats." White, blue collar men who sometimes vote for the Dem, sometimes for the Rethug. And with Kennedy, gone, they're that much more likely to vote for the conservative.

[Lasher]

10. You are free to believe whatever you wish.

If inclined, you can even pretend Massachusetts didn't actually vote in a Republican Senator.

[pnwmom]

24. Why would a liberal vote for a right-winger? There are plenty of more conservative

Democrats, even in the Kennedy fold -- Kennedy often drew higher support than other Dems on the ballot.

[Lasher]

25. Well this is about semantics at least to a degree.

On the one hand, Democrat = liberal and Republican = conservative. But you have legitimately invoked a more narrow definition of 'liberal'.

Even in that context, however, you cannot assume that there were no 'true' liberals who voted for Brown out of sheer rebellion. And there is another thing to consider: How many 'true' liberals just stayed home because they were disillusioned? If you will grant my assumption that there were at least some, then we would have been left with a voting segment that was not as enlightened as you or I, directly contributing to the result in question.

The 22% statistic does not tell the whole story but it tells enough.

[Johonny]

15. exactly

[bluethruandthru]

17. Can anyone even imagine Karl Rove saying those kinds of things

about the base of his party?? Would he ever say "turn off Fox, tune out Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh? The white house has it's conservative wing in hand" ?? EVER?

[JamesA1102]

18. He was talking about votes in the Congress for the Healthcare bill

This is a real distortion of what he said. And it comes from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. I'm surprized so many on the left are gulible enough to buy into Murdoch's spin.

[Lasher]

20. You have a point, he was talking about Congress.

But your charge of sinister misrepresentation is not justified. By marginalizing our liberal members of Congress they have alienated the constituents who elected them. This is not an isolated gaff, but characteristic of the administration's attitude as http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7518022&mesg_id=7518069">this post upthread demonstrates.

[mmonk]

5. Thanks. Bookmarking.

[shireen]

12. i really have to question the intelligence of the voters who won him that seat.

WHY? Was it because he paid more attention to you, made you feel warm and fuzzy, and pretended to be interested and concerned about your lives?
Dammit! You were electing a US Senator, not dating him!

[shireen]

14. duplicate post, deleted

[JamesA1102]

16. John Quincy Adams never served in the Senate.

He did serve in the House after his Presidency until his death.

[Libertas1776]

23. Actually, he did before he was Pres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_Massachusetts

[Javaman]

19. How does that saying go? "people get the government they deserve, not the one they want." nt

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cleita]

22. Yeah, he sure strikes me as a pretty boy dumb ass. n/t

[Joe the Liberal]

26. Well said.....

especially this

"But a once-storied Senate seat that belonged to Adams and Kennedy is now filled by a dim-witted wingnut, and that's a real shame -- for Massachusetts, for the Senate, and for all of us."