Sunday, January 24, 2010

Ross Mackenzie on the Massachusetts Earthquake ... McDonnell in the wings?

My favorite newspaper guy hits the nail on the head again while he opines on Republican Scott Brown's win in the Massachusetts special election on January 19:
... voters in Massachusetts, more liberal perhaps than voters in any other state, said they have had enough of the same ol' Washington same ol'. Obama took office a year ago promising transparency, a post-partisan presidency, history's most open administration. He pledged to put the final negotiations regarding Obamacare on C-SPAN.

Yet things didn't work out that way. We were introduced to a Chicago-ized national politics. Notably on his signature legislative initiative, with public support for it collapsing, he has sought to muscle it through. Secrecy, arm-twisting, and back-room deals have been the norm. His message to the people has been -- as it is even now: We are going to give the people government-mandated health care, and never mind what the people think. And so the divide, the disconnect, so eloquently described Tuesday in Massachusetts, between the people and an administration -- and a national Democratic Party -- out of touch.
-- Ross Mackenzie, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mr. Mackenzie chides condescending Democrats who take it as a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will win a second term as President because Republicans have no one to go up against him. He reminds them there is new blood coming up through the ranks:
Hey, here are two new possibilities: Bob McDonnell, Virginia's just-installed governor who won a starkly lopsided victory (his predecessor, lest we forget, is Obama's handpicked national Democratic chairman who couldn't deliver for his party his own state). Or, a name hardly heard until the Massachusetts earthquake -- pickup-driving Scott Brown.
Hear, hear.

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