Monthly Archives: January 2010

January 18, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Thinking about the unthinkable, Part Three

According to Real Clear Politics, all four polls that have come out since the beginning of the weekend show Scott Brown leading Martha Coakley. The lead ranges from 3 points (ARG) to 10 points (PJM/CrossTarget). Not surprisingly, given these results, the betting money, as reflected by Intrade, now strongly favors Brown. Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democratic polling firm, has Brown up by 5 points, 51-46. PPP polled more than »
January 18, 2010 — Scott Johnson

A quotation for Chairman “Marcia”

Hotline’s Felicia Sonmez captures an odd moment aptly provided by Rep. Patrick Kennedy speaking with a gaggle of reporters after the Coakley rally in Boston yesterday that featured Barack Obama. Kennedy offered the novel insight that while state Scott Brown offers voters a quick fix, the problems created by “George Bush and his cronies” are not so easily solved: “If you think there’s magic out there and things can be »
January 18, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Courting Disaster: A word from Marc Thiessen

Today is the official publication date of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack by Marc Thiessen. Thiessen has unusual credentials to address the subject of his book. As White House speechwriter for George Bush, Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was assigned the task of writing Bush’s September »
January 18, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The prophetic voice

When Martin Luther King, Jr. brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for »
January 17, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Dueling rallies in Massachusetts

President Obama came to Massachusetts today in a last-minute effort to preserve his party’s filibuster proof majority in the Senate. He did so at a rally on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston that featured the Massachusettls political establishment. Scott Brown countered with a rally in Worcester that featured Massachusetts sports legends Curt Schillling and Doug Flutie. I didn’t watch the dueling rallies, but this report by Politico leaves »
January 17, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Thinking about the unthinkable, Part Two

As I mentioned on Friday, a very recent poll conducted by Suffolk University shows that 51 percent of likely voters in Massachusetts oppose Obamacare while only 36 percent favor of it. This breakdown, even if accurate, isn’t going to sweep Scott Brown to victory by itself. After all, half of Massachusetts’ likely voters either favor Obamacare or don’t know whether they favor it or not. However, the poll does indicate »
January 17, 2010 — Scott Johnson

“The whole nation is watching”

Listening to both Martha Coakley’s and Barack Obama’s speeches at the rally in Boston today, one is struck by their defensive tone. (Video of the speeches is accessible here.) They are full of expressions of purported understanding for the anger of the electorate. Their purported understanding finds the source of the anger in the policies — surprise! — of Bush and Cheney, which Scott Brown is of course said to »
January 17, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The race in Massachusetts…

is nominally between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown, but over the past few days it’s turned into a race between Coakley’s Democrats and the bottom of the garbage can. Reaching into the bottom of the garbage can, the Massachusetts Democratic Party has sent out a four-page mailer whose cover alleges that “1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away.” »
January 16, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Political correctness and the 21st century battlefield

The national security panel at the Reclaim American Liberty conference in New York on Wednesday considered (1) whether we have the right legal architecture for maintaining our security and (2) whether we have the right battlefield architecture for this purpose. I summarized the panel discussion regarding the first question here. Tonight I’ll write about the second. The key panelist on our “battlefield architecture” was Col. Allen West (U.S. Army, Ret.). »
January 16, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Scott Brown’s appeal

The Cape Cod Times has endorsed Scott Brown. I doubt that the paper’s endorsement is a particularly big deal in and of itself. But the reasoning behind the endorsement shows, I think, why Brown is running overwhelmingly ahead among independent voters and seems even to be making headway among Democrats. Here is what the endorsement says (the emphasis is mine in all cases): Impressed with his energy and with hopes »
January 16, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Martha Coakley — a tale of two cases

Things keep getting worse for Martha Coakley. In her latest gaffe, as Scott notes below, she claimed that legendary Red Sox pitcher Curt Shilling is a Yankee fan. I’ve been inclined to believe that, to some extent, Coakley is simply “snake-bitten.” In other words, she’s not as gaffe-prone as she seems — who could be? — she’s just in a downward spiral. On the other hand, how do we explain »
January 16, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Clearing my spindle

I’ve been saving a number of items to write about that I want to present for your information without further comment. In one way or another, they are interesting and informative. The trial of al Qaeda terrorists in federal court will undoubtedly give us many moments like those afforded by the trial of “Lady al Qaeda” (Aafia Siddiqui). From Siddiqui’s trial comes this week’s New York Daily News report “Lady »
January 16, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Quotations from Chairman Martha, cont’d

I have dedicated myself to compiling the wit and wisdom of Massachusetts Democratic senatorial candidate Martha Coakley in the campaign, but she is making it tough to keep up. Yesterday on Nightside with Dan Rea on Boston’s WBZ Newsradio 1030 Coakley gave us this: Dan Rea: Would Barack Obama be in if this thing was not this close? Martha Coakley: Umm…it’s hard to know, I think that he is welcome »
January 15, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Another one bites the dust

Rep. Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, has decided to retire from Congress. Snyder’s chances of re-election in 2010 were minimal in a state as conservative as Arkansas. One poll showed him 17 percentage points behind Tim Griffin, his likely Republican challenger. Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, is a former U.S. attorney in Arkansas, having received one of those controversial Bush administration nominations that involved ousting the incumbent. It’s far »
January 15, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Time out from “Stalinism”

Boris Shor, a professor at the University of Chicago, makes what appears to be a persuasive case that Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts, is a liberal. Indeed, Shor argues that, objectively speaking, he is more liberal than Dede Scozzafava, the candidate for Congress in New York against whom most conservative turned, opting instead to support a third party candidate. Now, however, conservatives are vigorously supporting »
January 15, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Thinking about the unthinkable

One crude way to think about the Massachusetts Senate race is to suppose that the swing from Democrat to Republican in this race is as great as the remarkable swing from 2008 to 2009 that just occurred in the Virginia governor’s race. Would this produce a victory for Republican Scott Brown? The answer is: not quite. The swing in Virginia was about 24 percentage points. McCain lost to Obama by »
January 15, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

An unthinkable campaign ad has me thinking about the unthinkable

Not long ago, the unthinkable — a Scott Brown victory over Martha Coakley — became the distinctly possible and, following the latest gaffe by the Coakley campaign, it may now have ascended to the realm of the “about as likely as not.” The gaffe occurred when the Coakley campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee decided to attack Brown as the agent of “Wall Street greed.” Not terribly original, but »