PrintJanuary 21, 2010
How to Cause a Political Tsunami
Imagine that you were Martha Coakley and you were a shoo-in for the United States Senate only a month ago, making you a solid vote for President Obama's health care plan. Being a Democrat in Massachusetts with a twenty-point lead over your Republican opponent, a month before Election Day means you could spend the rest of the campaign on a beach in Tahiti with a Mai Tai in your lotion-covered hand. You could sip the rum cocktail through a straw and listen to the latest favorable polls from the land of the leftists.
However, Ms. Coakley, being a veteran politician, knew there was something in the air that made her feel uneasy. In one of the most liberal states in the union, where the Kennedy dynasty has ruled since time immemorial, people were beginning to awaken from the slavish devotion to Democrats that threatened the future of their children and grandchildren. Notwithstanding her large lead in the polls, Coakley must have been feeling the ground move as she heard almost daily news out of the White House that Obama was making deals with a variety of special interests in order to get support for his unprecedented power-grab.
When he used three hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to bribe Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for her vote on his government health care takeover, and pundits began referring to it as a modern-day version of the Louisiana Purchase, Ms. Coakley was probably getting a bit nervous. When Obama bribed Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson by promising that the federal government will pay to expand Medicaid services in his state, Coakley must have begun biting her nails.
When the polls began to reflect the Massachusetts voters' outrage, Coakley probably figured she had enough of a lead to weather the storm. Then, when it was announced that Obama had made a deal with major unions to exempt them from the tax on medical benefits while all others would be forced to pony up, she must have experienced the beginning stages of apoplexy. Add to that the fact that the oligarchy of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was having secret, closed-door meetings to decide what would go into the massive spending bill, and you can begin to imagine Coakley visualizing her future going down the drain.
I've written many columns about the in-your-face government corruption that seems to have grown exponentially in the last few decades. I've often wondered if those in power have any fear of retribution from the voters -- or have they determined that people are so lazy and apathetic that legalized robbery by an organized den of thieves can become standard operating procedure in America? Given the fact that 95% of our Congress is reelected every two years, I have great concern for the voters' willingness to study the issues, and not merely be susceptible to name recognition factors and the obscene amount of money spent on campaigns. Frankly, I was losing faith in the future. It seemed as though we were heading over a cliff, led by a Pied Piper playing a mesmerizing tune laced with an extremist ideology. I began to fear that the people of this great country had lost the rebellious spirit that centuries ago had struggled against a tyrannical government and created a free nation.
On Tuesday evening, in an electoral reenactment of a tea party held 237 years ago, voters in the commonwealth of Massachusetts threw the Obama Health Care Plan into Boston Harbor.
I began to believe again! Sadly, it took the extremism and the corruption of the aforementioned treacherous trio to get voters, with a three-and-a-half-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans in that erstwhile land of Oz, to reject their own party and do what's right for their country. When the top elected reps in the nation began robbing us blind, thumbing their noses at us, and daring us to do something about it, even the most starry-eyed acolytes of the administration finally came to their senses.
Every hardworking, taxpaying citizen has been witnessing the end of the country his forefathers had envisioned for him. The political tsunami that put Scott Brown in the Senate may be the beginning of the end of this latest attempt to have Big Brother telling us what's good for us. If Coakley's defeat is a precursor to the November elections, Harry Reid will be history, and Nancy Pelosi will be just another member of Congress.
Bob Weir is a former detective sergeant in the New York City Police Department. He is the executive editor of The News Connection in Highland Village, Texas. E-mail Bob.
