Beacon Street Journal

The central message of last night’s state of the union address? Regardless of the clarion call sent by voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and now from Massachusetts, Obama is going to double-down on his left wing agenda. In short, Obama is going to fight hard to give an unruly and ungrateful electorate that which they don’t want or need. Those who were anticipating a shift or pivot to the center on the part of President Obama, especially in light of the stinging rebuke most recently delivered by Massachusetts voters, may have been somewhat surprised, but they shouldn’t be.

As evidenced by the unprecedented decline in Obama’s approval ratings, there is serious buyer’s remorse about the land. But, you get what you pay for, and in Obama, all the vacuous rhetoric and mythologizing about him being a post-partisan, transcendent politician notwithstanding, what the voters purchased was an unrepentant liberal. There will be no pivot to the center because at heart, Obama is a left-wing ideologue. The man who hung out with his “spiritual mentor” Jeremiah Wright for twenty years has no interest in governing from the center because he is first and foremost a creature of the far left.

In typical Obama fashion, the speech was laced with personal pronouns some 100 times. For, it’s not about us, it’s all about him. He won’t quit. As our self-anointed savior, he is going to keep on fighting. But for what? The unmistakable answer is: to enact left wing policies the country fervently opposes. This arrogance, born of his innate ideological rigidity, was most pronounced when he declared that he was going full bore for his cap and trade scheme. Never mind that the science behind global warming has been thoroughly repudiated and its fraudulent pretenses exposed. His “facts don’t matter” approach to the global warming scam perfectly encapsulates his governing philosophy: as a liberal elitist, he  knows what’s best for us, and we’re getting cap and trade — the incontrovertible facts that demonstrate that this faith-based doctrine is a monstrous hoax be damned.

Dull, pedantic, predictable, the speech was disjointed, and at times, terribly discordant. How can a man who promised repeatedly during his campaign that he would televise health care deliberations on C-SPAN yet who then becomes a willing participant in all the nefarious, corrupt and secret back-room deals, now utter a word about changing the culture of Washington with a straight face? Remarkably, it’s as if he believes he is somehow immune from the adverse ramifications of his glaring contradictions on this subject painfully exposed via YouTube. Last night, all the by-now familiar themes were on display: the straw men, the invocation of Change, “false choices,” and demonizing the Republicans as partisan.  All the mellifluous and sonorous words however were simply not consonant with the actual facts of the Obama presidency. But we have been down this road so often, that by now, the silver tongue can no longer obscure the reality of the gap between what he says or promises and what he actually does. In short, as most voters have come to realize, our president doesn’t practice what he preaches.

Obama’s agenda and priorities are  perversely inverted: Despite the fact that global warming ranks almost dead last among voters in terms of priorities, despite the fact that that his health care “reform” ranks about eighth, Obama has decided nonetheless to charge forward with his big government agenda.

Obama’s message last night to members of his own party ,who post Scott Brown, can read the handwriting on the wall was don’t head for the hills, stand with me and fight . After last night’s performance, which indicates the Obama Administration is on a political kamikaze mission, I suspect that many more of his fellow Democrats will be abandoning ship.

In the wake of the unequivocal message sent by Massachusetts’ voters last week to President Obama, it has been a source of constant amusement to watch the White House ’s reaction evolve from one of shock and denial, into what now can only be described as delusional. In the aftermath of the stunning Scott Brown victory, Obama assessed the state of voter disenchantment in the Bay State by claiming that the same forces that propelled Scott Brown to victory were responsible for his ascension to the presidency. White House press secretary Robert Gibb’s added to the incredulity with his preposterous assertion, made to Fox News’ Chris Wallace that, “more people voted to express their support for Barack Obama than to oppose him.” When one hears statements such as these, a question arises: Do Democrats have a death wish?

But the comedy of errors continues unabated. In a fit of desperation, a panicked White House has decided that the best way to distract disenchanted voters from the debacle of the health care bill is for Obama to embrace populism by demagoguing Wall Street. In a town hall meeting in Elyria, Ohio last week Obama told the crowd that he would never stop fighting for them and he vowed to continue to battle for his health care reform package.

Despite the fact that most banks have already paid back all the money they were given under TARP with interest, Obama vowed to impose a tax on Wall Street because,…I want to charge Wall Street a modest fee to repay taxpayers in full for saving their skin in a time of need. You can rest assured, we’re going to get that money — your money — back, each and every dime.”

In order to have a fighting chance of credibly converting from a liberal elitist to a Jacksonian Democrat, it is clear that Obama will first need to find some new speechwriters. His repeated mocking of Scott Brown’s pick-up truck during his last minute appearance in Boston to shore-up the beleaguered campaign of Martha Coakley backfired badly and underscores why casting a tone-deaf Obama as a populist is an enterprise that is doomed to failure.

Obama, as an unrepentant liberal, will never be able to don the mask of a populist. For the fundamental conceit of liberalism is the belief of its practitioners in their moral and intellectual superiority. As such, all liberals, including Barack Obama, are elitists. As evidenced by the attempts of  a small coterie of congressional left-wingers to cram down the throats of an unreceptive electorate Obamacare and cap and trade, liberals don’t seek to govern so much as they seek to control and impose their world-view on the country. It is no mystery why during the Democratic primaries, Obama had trouble securing the blue-collar vote. His haughty and condescending comment that these voters opposed him because they cling to their guns and religion simply demonstrates that his deeply held political convictions are alien to most Americans.

Populism is a distinctly American political tradition. Yet Obama has spent the entire first year of his presidency trying to impose on an unreceptive electorate a European style social democratic form of government. The stunning upset victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts was an unmistakable warning that Americans have had enough of the Democrats’ attempt to foist upon the country  its vision of a left-wing paradise, where inexplicably, terrorists who want to kill us are given the full constitutional protections reserved for American citizens. This may come as a surprise to the man who willingly absorbed the racist, left-wing rants of the odious Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, but Americans don’t want their country converted into a giant province of Amsterdam.

For the new populist, anti-Wall Street Obama, there is also the not insignificant matter of hypocrisy as well as biting the hand that feeds you. For the Democratic Party, by far, has been the principal beneficiary of Wall Street campaign donations. How does Obama expect now to inveigh against the evils of fat cat bankers on Wall Street ,when during the campaign, he was all to eager to accept their cash?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After just one year in office, the politician who started his presidency with a national reservoir of good will and so much promise has been felled by  a little known Republican from a state that has been a bastion of liberalism. In a stunning and unprecedented act of political jiu jitsu, Scott Brown achieved a historically significant election victory by deftly using against President Obama the very same themes of Hope and Change that had catapulted him from obscurity to the Oval Office.

Consider the similarities in their respective political ascendancy. During the Democratic presidential primaries, Obama was seen as an impudent upstart, a lightweight who had the audacity to challenge the inevitability of Hillary’s candidacy. He took head-on the formidable Clinton political machine and emerged victorious. Brown faced similar odds in his quest to fill the Senate seat of Ted Kennedy. He squared-off against the entrenched Massachusetts Democratic Party political machine and beat the ‘inevitable” candidate Martha Coakley — the anointed heir to the Kennedy legacy.

Through his insurgent candidacy, Brown rode the crest of what was initially a wave, that quickly became a national tsunami of disenchantment and disillusionment with the hard-left regal asbsolutism with which Congressional Democrats and President Obama have governed over the past year. As the Coakley campaign floundered and Brown started to surge, he became the vehicle of a national protest against the excesses of one-party rule personified in the crafting of a corrupt trillion dollar behemoth health care bill that the electorate fervently opposed. Brown took on the role of the outsider, the everyman against the condescending elitism of Obama and his radical left-wing congressional cohorts.

Brown’s populist victory has inverted the natural political order, both symbolically and substantively. Independent voters in Massachusetts were astute enough to pierce through the empty and vacuous rhetoric of Obama as the post-partisan uniter  and instead saw him and his Congressional allies as corrupt power-brokers having nothing but disdain for democracy and the will of  the people on whose behalf they purportedly serve. With his unequivocal promise to drive a stake through the heart of Obamacare, it was Brown who was viewed across the country by many as the new harbinger of Hope and Change. His victory would be a fulfillment of their wishes to be liberated from the arrogance of their haughty overseers. Brown’s feat is all the more remarkable, all the more accomplished than that achieved by Barack Obama, because Brown accomplished his feat in a fortnight, while Obama had years to cultivate and succor his campaign theme of therapeutic Change.

After the failures of Copenhagen, Virginia and New Jersey, Obama suffered at the hands of Scott Brown the ultimate humiliation — the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts. The political capital of the president is now exhausted, his credibility in tatters. In terms of helping out on the campaign trail, many Democrats must now realize the obvious: Obama is an albatross, not a savior.

As Lord Acton so famously said: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The voters of Massachusetts stand poised tomorrow to end the venality, abuse of power and overreaching that goes hand-in-hand when one political party calls all the shots. The corruption on display in connection with both the substantive and procedural aspects of Obamacare has created a stench that is now permeating the land. Massachusetts’ voters have the opportunity to send an unequivocal message, that will be heard from coast to coast, that the electorate has had enough of the assault on our liberties and the callous indifference of our elected representatives and president to the will of the people who fervently oppose a radical alteration of our health care delivery system. The Democratic-controlled Congress nonetheless seems intent on passing this monstrous piece of legislation — the wishes of the electorate be damned.

In many ways, Massachusetts is a perfect microcosm of the current reigning political culture in Washington: arrogant, elitist and wholly unresponsive to those on whose behalf they purportedly govern. Massachusetts’ voters, having been bamboozled by the vacuous rhetoric of empty suit Governor Deval Patrick, the original pied-piper of Hope and Change, can see the national future unfolding through the administration of his political clone, Barack Obama, and by their decision tomorrow, may wish to spare the nation the embarrassment of declining fortunes which the Bay State has experienced at the hands of a political neophyte and his Democratic Party allies in the legislature.

Coakley is a political hack representative of this culture of mediocrity and unscrupulousness so entrenched in the Bay State. She is a product of a political culture that has seen the past three Speakers of the House (all Democrats) forced to resign from office in disgrace after being indicted on corruption charges. Exhibiting a contempt for those who elected them, Democratic politicians in the Commonwealth do what they wish and say what they want with impunity. Coakley’s shameful and shockingly dishonest response to the reporter assault incident is perfectly consistent with this posture.

Even the residents of Massachusetts have had enough. A vote for Republican Scott Brown is a way for the voters of the Commonwealth to poke a stick in the eye of those politicians who are the natural by-products of this nefarious culture.

Seemingly oblivious to the excesses of a hard-left liberalism — of which Obama and Congressional Democrats have come to epitomize — voters in the bluest of blue states are about to awaken from their somnolence and slumber. Come what may Wednesday morning, this much is clear: Massachusetts will have sent an unmistakable warning to Democrats in Congress. If they insist on ignoring it, they do so at their peril.

A new Suffolk University poll in the Massachusetts Senate race has Republican candidate Scott Brown ahead of Democrat Martha Coakley by 4 points. Brown has a staggering 65/30% lead over Coakley with Independent voters.

How panicked are Democrats at these latest results? There are now rumblings that President Obama may make a trip to the Bay State to help shore-up a Coakley campaign that appears to be imploding. In addition, as Byron York reports, the spin on a possible Coakley loss in liberal Massachusetts, a state which Obama carried by 26 points, has begun in earnest:

Intensifying the gloom, the Democrat says, is the fact that the same polls showing Coakley falling behind also show President Obama with a healthy approval rating in the state. “With Obama at 60 percent in Massachusetts, this shouldn’t be happening, but it is,” the Democrat says.

Given those numbers, some Democrats, eager to distance Obama from any electoral failure, are beginning to compare Coakley to Creigh Deeds, the losing Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor’s race last year. Deeds ran such a lackluster campaign, Democrats say, that his defeat could be solely attributed to his own shortcomings, and should not be seen as a referendum on President Obama’s policies or those of the national Democratic party.

The idea that a loss by Coakley — or even a razor-thin victory — will not have national ramifications for the Democratic Party is of course preposterous. Obama himself intimated as much with the web video he produced earlier in the week for the Coakley campaign. Yes, Coakley has run a dreadful campaign. The reason? As the Democrat in the race, she felt she was entitled to the seat. The Democratic Party viewed it not so much as an election to be decided by the voters, but rather as a sort of exercise in political primogeniture with Coakley being anointed as the rightful successor. The Democrats viewed Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat as their personal property as if the election was a mere formality.

It is hard to fathom the enormity of Coakley’s stupidity which has been on abundant display throughout the campaign. The most notable and recent instance being her lame statement that she was not “privy to the facts” of an assault on a reporter while she was captured in an AP photo looking straight at the man as he lay on the ground. More recent gaffes include telling Catholics (about 50% of the Massachusetts electorate) that while they have religious freedom, they probably ought not to work in a hospital’s Emergency Room. Her abysmal record as a District Attorney for Middlesex County has also come under scrutiny.

Coakley, an unrepentant liberal, has let it be known throughout the campagin that she is in lockstep with every single one of the items on the agenda of the Obama Administration that many Independent Massachusetts’ voters fervently oppose. This includes Obamacare and treateing terrorists like criminal defendants.

Massachusetts has been a one-party state and not surprisingly, Democrats have abused their power. The last three Speakers of the Massachusetts House, all Democrats, have been forced to resign in disgrace after being indicted on corruption charges. Voters in this state see the same one-party dynamic at work in Washington and have had enough.  Coakley is representative of a long line of Massachusetts Democratic politicians who think it is their natural right to “trade-up” on the political ladder when a vacancy opens — qualifications be damned.

Coakley, a career hack, hails from this tradition. As confirmed by the findings in the Suffolk University poll, even some registered Democrats are reeling at the prospect of sending this manifestly unqualified dimwit to Washington.

To describe the campaign that Democrat Martha Coakley has conducted as dreadful would be an understatement. The central issue for the Coakley campaign is: has she offered Democratic-leaning voters a compelling reason to vote for her? Cool, aloof and utterly detached from the retail campaigning in which Republican Scott Brown has engaged and excelled, throughout the race for Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat, Coakley has remained in seclusion, hiding from voters. Meeting with residents of the Commonwealth to seek their vote is an activity that she clearly views is beneath her. Coakley’s campaign strategy has been to expect Massachusetts voters will pull the lever for her come election day solely because she has a “D” after her name.

So I argue in my latest post for True/Slant which you can read here.

The Coakley campaign spin on the reporter assault incident has gone horribly awry.

Take a look at this photograph, and then see if it is consistent with this after-the-fact Coakley response: “I didn’t see what happened so I can’t say.” In addition, Coakley told reporters yesterday that she is not “privy to the facts.” Really? You want to try arguing that case in front of a jury Martha?

At the same time she was offering her lame explanation to reporters in Boston yesterday, her henchman, Michael Meehan, was in the process of trying to contact Weekly Standard reporter, John McCormack, to offer his apology for being a “little too aggressive.” Coakley thus managed, in an inexplicable act of self-immolation, to erode her own credibility.

At issue here is Coakley’s judgment. Who would offer up such a dubious explanation in light of an already published incriminating photograph that is wholly at odds with her assertion that she didn’t know what happened? There were a number of different explanations she could have offered, but none quite so incredulous as the one she gave.

Coakley’s comment not only taxes one’s credulity, but it also, in light of the incontrovertible evidence concerning the incident that existed at the time she made her statement, insults the intelligence of the voters of Massachusetts. Her lack of candor on the assault incident and the many unforced errors she has committed throghout the campaign, is indicative of her political strategy. For, Coakley has conducted her campaign with an overweening sense of entitlement. For her, Massachusetts voters should do what they are told and robotically pull the lever come election day solely because she has a D after her name. But in the end, will this posture be sufficient to win the race?

The Martha Coakley aide who was caught on tape assaulting a reporter for The Weekly Standard has been tentatively identified as Michael Meehan, a high-level political operative for the Democratic Party.

Meehan was recently assigned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), to help the faltering Coakley campaign with its “messaging.” Unfortunately for Coakley, the message sent by Meehan in this unprovoked altercation has been received loud and clear by Massachusetts voters: our candidate will take your vote but is under no obligation to answer any tough questions.

If this YouTube video goes viral, it could spell real trouble for the Coakley campaign. For the incident it depicts is rich with symbolism about the manner in which Martha Coakley has conducted her campaign for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Since Coakley, as the Democrat in the race, feels entitled to the Senate seat, it is clear that she views earning the right to represent the voters as a nuisance that is beneath her. Not only has Coakley avoided retail campaigning by remaining utterly disengaged from the voters of Massachusetts, but her goons apparently are free to deal in a thuggish manner with pesky reporters attempting to ask her inconvenient questions.

And the reason for this inexcusable provocation? Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack wanted to ask Coakley what she was doing in Washington D.C. raising money for her lethargic campaign from lobbyists for the big pharmaceutical and other health care companies.

Perhaps the bigger and more damning question, tellingly illustrated by this photograph as well as the YouTube video, is why does Coakley, as the highest law enforcement official for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, witness an assault and battery incident perpetrated by one of her operatives and then does nothing?

Update: Coakley has responded to the incident by claiming that the reporter was a “stalker.” Got that, a stalker.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8CdfQGlgVw&feature=player_embedded

Nothing better illustrates the sheer desperation of Democrats, now looking at a close contest in the race to fill the vacant Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy for over three decades, than this YouTube video of a Democratic Party operative physically blocking John McCormack, a reporter for The Weekly Standard, from asking Martha Coakley a question.

Coakley, despite recent assistance from the DNC, continues to run a lackluster campaign remaining utterly disengaged from the voters of Massachusetts. With less than a week to election day, instead of hitting the campaign trail, she spends the day down in Washington hobnobbing with lobbyists from the health care industry. McCormack was attempting to ask Coakley a question about the fundraiser she had just attended.

You can read McCormack’s account of the altercation here.