Brown, the smart pick
If Republicans are smart they’ll pick Scott Brown, the new senator from Massachusetts, to give the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Jan. 27. Brown’s upset victory this week in a special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat probably is the most electrifying political event since Obama’s triumph in 2008. Brown ran a brilliant campaign, tapping into broad unrest in the country over Obama’s health care proposals, the administration’s perceived arrogance in pushing them, spending and other issues. Independents carried him to victory, and the GOP needs to capitalize on his connection with non-ideological voters. Some Republicans will grouse that he’s not conservative enough in some area or another, but he’s lightning in a bottle, with Sarah Palin-like charisma. Last year Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal responded to Obama’s message to Congress and came up small. In Scott Brown, Republicans have a chance to steal the evening. To borrow one of Brown’s campaign slogans, the GOP needs to “gas up the truck” and unleash their newest senator on the country.
Root, root, root for the Red Sawks
If Democrat Martha Coakley is defeated Tuesday by Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy, there’ll be a lot of analysis on the whys and wherefores. There might not be a more compelling reason than Coakley revealing late in the campaign that she doesn’t know beans (as in Boston) about the beloved Red Sox.
Coakley riled Red Sox Nation by insisting in a radio interview that former Sox star pitcher Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan. Yes, those Yankees. She tried to correct herself, and later her staff said it was a deadpan joke that didn’t work. Too late, damage done. Schilling had a good laugh and posted something on his blog. And Sawks fans were left wondering how anyone in the commonwealth could think Curt Schilling — he of the bloody sock from Boston’s 2006 World Series championship team — was a fan of those hated pinstripers from the Bronx.
Blame it on global warming
In the interests of fair and comment, if Pat Robertson gets an eye roll for blaming the Haiti earthquake on Let’s Make a Deal with the devil, then actor/activist Danny Glover gets one for blaming it on global warming. In an interview with an Australian news outlet Glover said the Haitian quake is linked to the lack of progress at the recent climate change conference in Denmark. “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?” Uh, no. Earthquakes are older than any conceivable human influence on the earth’s temperature. Tectonic plates and all that. Glover and Robertson prove the political spectrum has its fringe at both ends.
Robertson eruption
It’s been awhile since Pat Robertson last erupted, so it’s not surprising his latest outburst was a doozy — linking the devastating earthquake in Haiti to some kind of deal he says the Haitian people made with the devil in the 1790s to shed the yoke of French colonizers. “They were under the heel of the French,” Robertson said Wednesday, “and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ ” Besides being of dubious scholarship, Robertson’s remark was off the charts offensive given the death toll and destruction in Haiti. Of course, Robertson is notorious for interpreting contemporary events as the works of God or Satan or both. He blamed the 9/11 attacks on the country’s ban on public school prayer and said Hurricane Katrina was retribution for abortion. For conservatives the hard thing is a number of Americans still think Robertson speaks for a large segment of their movement. They can only hope for another kind of miracle — that next time some calamity occurs Pat Robertson will just keep quiet.
Green badge of courage?
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe loves getting a rise out of environmental groups and the attention that goes with it — like Rolling Stone magazine’s new article naming him one of the planet’s worst enemies. The Tulsa Republican has gotten under a lot of people’s skin contesting the “settled science” of global warming and environmental regulatory efforts that carry a big economic price tag, all from his perch on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Interestingly, while Inhofe and chairman Barbara Boxer of California are polar opposites on just about every environmental concern, they’re actually warm friends otherwise. Go figure.
As for Rolling Stone, Inhofe’s main beef with the article is he thinks he was ranked too low. “My first response was I should have been No. 1, not No. 7,” he told The Tulsa World. “I am serious about that. I have spent now literally years on this thing, and it has been a long, involved thing.” And he shows no sign of easing his foot off the gas pedal. Sorry.
Tuition for illegal immigrants
New Jersey won’t be joining the short list of states allowing undocumented students to attend college at in-state tuition rates. The effect, supporters said, is that children will be punished for the actions of their illegal immigrant parents and likely won’t attend college at all. The measure’s failure is rightfully disappointing although the in-state tuition denial has become a politically popular choice in many states. While higher education is not a right, it’s an opportunity that ought to be as widely available as possible for those who want it. Banning students who were young and had no say when their family immigrated slams shut the door of opportunity for many of those students who simply cannot afford the much higher price tag of out-of-state tuition. What good comes from that?
Sense of entitlement
Next week there’s a big special election in Massachusetts to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy last August. Actually, the seat’s not vacant. The Democratic machine in the Bay State put party retread Paul Kirk in there to keep it warm, presumably for the state’s Democratic attorney general, Martha Coakley, who faces Republican Scott Brown and Independent Joseph Kennedy (not that Joe Kennedy!) on Jan. 19 . The three debated Monday night, and judging by the account in the Boston Globe, it was pretty lively.
Easily the best comeback of the night came from Brown, who’s running in a state where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats 3-1 and who’s trying to dispel any entitlement Democrats feel because of such a registration edge. Asked by moderator David Gergen whether he felt comfortable taking Kennedy’s seat and becoming the vote that would stop health care, Kennedy’s signature issue, Brown pounced. “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedys’ seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat,” Brown said. “It’s the people’s seat.” That, as they say, is bearding the lion in his own den.
Fleeing from the kids
Talking about last week’s retirement announcement by U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer got off a great line. Praising the Connecticut Democrat’s observation that politicians who announce they’re leaving office to spend time with their families is “pathetic,” Krauthammer said that when people announce they’re running for political office they should be required to acknowledge they’re doing it to get away from their families. Hilariously logical!
Mad Max
Video of U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt., criticizing Republicans for opposing health care legislation is creating some ripples in Washington. A link on the Drudge Report to a five-minute clip from Baucus’ Dec. 23 floor speech asks whether the chairman of the powerful Finance Committee was a little tipsy: “Drunk With Power? Top Dem Slurs on Senate Floor.” You can’t tell that for sure from the video itself. Baucus repeats himself a number of times and isn’t always coherent, but then he was never going to be confused with Daniel Webster anyway. Not surprisingly, the senator’s office adamantly denied their man was under any influence — other than anger with the GOP for not going along with the Democrats on health care.
About those job numbers …
Conservatives have been howling for months about the Obama administration’s “jobs created/jobs saved” statistics. Every official measure of the country’s employment situation has shown the economy shedding jobs throughout the year. Yet the White House has insisted that its policies have saved a number of jobs and has issued figures to prove it.
Unchallengeable, of course. The number of jobs saved is in the eye of the beholder — or the counter. Now ABC News reports the counting has been off, calculating a number of jobs saved to congressional districts that don’t exist. For example, ABC reports, the administration’s stimulus Web site claims 30 jobs were saved in Arizona’s 15th District — but Arizona only has eight districts.
An administration official said human error was to blame. “Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in,” a spokesman said, “so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”
