Posted on 03/26/2006 4:46:21 AM PST by billorites
Once upon a time, no one whipped up conservative rage like Ted Kennedy. Back in the day, the senator from Massachusetts wasn’t just a misguided Democrat — he was the Liberal Great Satan, a genuine menace to all things good and holy.
Consider Teddy Bare: The Last of the Kennedy Clan, a 1971 screed by Zad Rust dedicated to the accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne two years earlier. The circumstances of the case were ugly: after driving his car off a bridge and into the waters of Poucha Pond, Kennedy swam to safety and fled, instead of immediately notifying the police. By the time the car was dragged to the surface the following morning, Kopechne was dead.
For author Rust, a fervent anticommunist with a conspiratorial streak, Chappaquiddick epitomized the gulf between Kennedy myth and Kennedy reality. As such, it offered a final chance to open America’s eyes. Like his brothers before him, Ted Kennedy, Rust warned, is “one of the prominent operators chosen by the Hidden Forces that are hurling the countries of Western Civilization toward the Animal Farm world willed by Lenin and his successors.” If Ted Kennedy were elected president, he concluded, a “satanic utopia” would result.
Heavy.
Today, however, the Clintons have replaced the Kennedys as the primary objects of conservative rage. Not only do Bill and Hillary embody the same alleged vices (ruthless ambition, shocking immorality), but they’re also far more powerful. Ted Kennedy may still be the “Liberal Lion of the Senate,” capable of stirring the Democratic faithful at key moments. But after serving in the US Senate since 1962, he’s also an old man (74, to be precise). He’ll never be president. And after dispatching a series of strong Republican challengers, it’s clear he’ll never lose his Senate seat.
Kennedy hatred, in turn, has become a political relic. Last week, at a shindig for young Boston-area Republicans, I asked Jay Cinq-Mars — a Northeastern student managing college outreach for would-be Kennedy challenger Kevin Scott — about his boss’s possible opponent. In response, Cinq-Mars actually offered praise for the man Republicans used to love to loathe. “I’m not going to lie — he’s still got it,” Cinq-Mars said. “He’s been in there forty years, but when he’s prepared, from what I’ve seen, he’s very charismatic. His arguments are very flawed, when you think about them, but when you hear him speak, he presents them very well. He’s very captivating.” Talk about a generation gap.
Kennedy as GOP kingmaker
Just after Chappaquiddick, it would have been foolish to bet on Kennedy’s long-term political future. He ran unopposed in the 1970 Democratic primary, but more than a quarter of Democrats opted not to vote for him. In the 1970 final, meanwhile, Republican Josiah Spaulding pulled in 37 percent of the vote. Considering the Kennedy clan’s status as de facto Massachusetts royalty, these numbers suggested that Teddy was damaged goods.
But he wasn’t — at least not fatally. In the coming decades, no Republican challenger ever came close to knocking off Kennedy. Still, he did attract a string of credible, aggressive Republican challengers. Each generated passion among the conservative faithful, and each went on to become an icon among Massachusetts Republicans.
In 1982, Ray Shamie ran a solid race, pulling in 38 percent of the vote to Kennedy’s 61. After making one more unsuccessful Senate run — he lost to John Kerry, 55 percent to 45 percent, in 1984 — Shamie took the reins of the Massachusetts GOP, where he helped orchestrate Bill Weld’s 1990 gubernatorial victory. Six years later, Kennedy beat back Joe Malone, winning two-thirds of the vote. Malone later parlayed this high-profile defeat into a successful run for state treasurer; today, though out of office, he remains one of the state GOP’s major figures.
Then came the 1994 election cycle, which saw Republicans run their strongest Kennedy opponent yet. Mitt Romney lost, just like his predecessors. But by pulling Kennedy below the 60 percent mark — and cracking 40 percent himself — Romney gave the GOP a legitimate moral victory. He also boosted his own career prospects: eight years later, he was elected governor of Massachusetts.
The pattern was clear: by taking on Kennedy, promising young Republicans could make their names statewide and become forces in the Massachusetts GOP. Obviously, this was good for the people in question. But it was also good for the state Republican Party, which had hemorrhaged influence throughout the second half of the 20th century and needed all the young stars it could get.
In retrospect, though, it seems clear that the 1994 campaign put an end to this dynamic. Before Romney lost, there was always the hope — faint as it may have been — that with the right candidate, under the right circumstances, Kennedy might be beat. But Romney was the best candidate possible, and he didn’t even come close. Six years later, the best the Republicans could do was Jack E. Robinson, a disastrous candidate who was publicly repudiated by then–Republican governor Paul Cellucci and trounced by Kennedy, 73 percent to 13 percent, in the final election. Even taking the 12 percent tally of Libertarian candidate Carla Howell into account, it was clear that the bloc of anti-Kennedy votes was dwindling fast.
This year, Massachusetts Republicans hoped to prove that 2000 was an anomaly. GOP leaders reportedly courted former Republican congressman Peter Blute and former Massachusetts Turnpike board member Christy Mihos to take on Kennedy. Both said no, however — which leaves Massachusetts with two relatively obscure Republicans looking to challenge Kennedy this fall.
One is Ken Chase, a square-jawed Belmont resident who carries himself with a mortician’s grave earnestness and makes his living running a French-and-Spanish-language school. In 2004, Chase challenged Democratic congressman Ed Markey; the outcome — 74 percent to 21 percent — was Jack E. Robinson–esque. The other GOP contender? Kevin Scott, a self-deprecating former Wakefield selectman with a penchant for cheesy humor.
Both Chase and Scott are pleasant, engaging individuals who would make solid state-legislative candidates. Neither seems destined to strike much fear in the heart of Kennedy supporters, however, or to create a stir among the GOP faithful. In fact, they’ll probably be lucky just to scrounge up the requisite number of signatures — 10,000 by May 2 — to get on the ballot.
In addition, both men are living proof that Kennedy hatred just isn’t what it used to be. At a recent Winchester Republican Town Committee breakfast, both candidates had a chance to sell themselves to the Republican grassroots. Chase went first: he strode to the front of the room, emphasized the need to support Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign, and then hammered Kennedy for ... failing to end American dependence on foreign oil.
That’s right. “Today, we’re paying about $2.25 for 87 octane at the pump,” Chase told his baffled-looking audience. “The most powerful Democrat in the land is Ted Kennedy, and has been for 44 years. He has never lifted a finger to free us from Middle Eastern oil.”
It didn’t stop there. “We would not be in Iraq today, and we would not have gone into Kuwait back in 1991 [if not for oil]. There is a man who has had the ability and the obligation to do something about that, because with power comes the obligation to act. And that man is Ted Kennedy, and he has failed that test.”
Actually, President George W. Bush would seem to be the one man with the ability and the obligation to rectify these problems, but whatever. Chase’s statements left a great opening for Scott, who spoke next, to toss some red meat to the Republican faithful. Instead, the man from Wakefield began on a nonpartisan note, arguing that “common sense has been thrown out the window” in the current US Congress.
A bit later, after endorsing Steve Forbes’s flat-tax proposal, Scott turned his attention to Kennedy. His message: Kennedy is 1) “way out in left field”; 2) was mean during Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings; and 3) should have done more to rein in Big Dig costs. It was point two that the crowd liked most. “Samuel Alito is absolutely a top-shelf human being,” Scott protested. “A great family man, a great scholar, an honest person. You do not treat people like that that way.” The ensuing applause was the loudest that either candidate received — maybe because it hinted, ever so delicately, at the same point that Kennedy haters used to make explicitly: Cut through the bullshit, and Ted Kennedy just isn’t a good person.
Old-timers weigh in
As anti-Kennedy animus goes the way of the dodo, Howie Carr — the Boston Herald columnist, WRKO-AM talking head, and best-selling author of The Brothers Bulger — is doing his utmost to keep that hate alive. In addition to hammering the senator in the Herald and on the AM airwaves, Carr is the self-described “curator” of www.FatBoy.cc , an online trove of all things anti-Kennedy.
As of this writing, the January 2006 National Enquirer cover featuring a photo of Kennedy’s alleged “love child” gets top billing on Carr’s site. Farther down the page, there’s a photo of Kopechne, followed by a shot of the car she died in being pulled from the water. For those who desire more, FatBoy.cc also features links to additional Kennedy material, all of it profoundly unflattering: photos highlighting Kennedy’s obesity; audio clips of tormented Kennedy oratory; photos — some topless! — of various women linked, for better or worse, to the Kennedy men.
As Carr explains it, his motivation is simple. “I don’t like the guy,” he tells the Phoenix. “He’s been living off his brothers’ glory. I don’t like his politics. I don’t think he’s been good for the country, and I don’t think he’ll be good for the country.”
But try as Carr might, he’s fighting a losing battle. As Chase and Scott stump in communities around Massachusetts, laboring to get their 10,000 signatures by the deadline, they find the deepest animus among people in their 70s and 80s — men and women who remember firsthand both the overheated veneration of Camelot and Ted Kennedy’s indefensible actions at Chappaquiddick. When Scott worked the Gloucester post office earlier this month, the vitriol came from a picket-toothed old man carrying a transistor radio. “He knocks down Alito, knocks everybody else down, but he never looks at himself,” grumbled the man, who gave his name as Frank the Wacko. “What happened at, whatever you call it, in Chippiquick? Where he murdered the girl with the baby?” (Kopechne’s pregnancy has long been rumored, but was never established.)
Meanwhile, as Chase stood outside a Waltham supermarket, it fell to another elderly man to represent old-time Kennedy hatred. “Romney had the best chance,” he rasped. “But when the chips were down, Teddy called his boys in from the Midwest — ‘Laboring men.’ That son of a bitch! He never cared about laboring men!”
To state the obvious, these gentlemen won’t be around forever. And as they and their ideological compatriots pass away, Kennedy hatred will become, slowly but surely, an abstraction — a state of mind that people know about, generally speaking, but that fewer and fewer have actually lived.
If Kennedy is re-elected this year, this term will almost certainly be his last. His retirement will bring endless tributes from liberals and diatribes from conservatives. The Chappaquiddick references will be dusted off, along with references to cheating at Harvard and overindulgence in food and drink — and then, once the hoopla around Kennedy’s departure has died down, they’ll be put away, maybe for good.
Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
You've been reading James Taranto.....
LOL
Not with me.
Yep. The only thing funnier than his Kennedy comments are the ones he makes about John Kerry*
* The French-looking Senator who served in Vietnam.
* The French-looking Senator who, by the way, served in Vietnam.
Thanks for the correction.
Yeah, I read him too. < laughing >
Really? Ted the Swimmer isn't gonna live forever. No point having loathing for a guy who is dead.
I've noticed a concerted effort by the left lately to rehabilitate the Swimmer by downplaying Chapaquiddick. It's one of the sorriest spectacles I've seen, frankly - but, then again, the left has shown time and time again that it doesn't have any shame.
The GOP should be drafting Taranto to run for something, ANYthing, although it occurs to me that if Karl Rove were to suddenly decide to hire a protege', Taranto could easily fill the bill.
Now about Fat Teddy?
Politically, Teddy is to America what the herpes virus was to the "free love" movement of the 60's and 70's.
Good post, and for once I find myself agreeing with a Phoenix writer. I do in fact focus every last ounce of hate at the clintons. Fat Boy just isn't worth it. BFT may be an unfortunate Massachusetts tradition, but his performance during the Alito hearings is a perfect example of how this drunken, braindead, old buffoon drives voters to the Republicans by being an embarrassment to the Democrats.
I will never forget when my dad finished the last page of Teddy Bare, btw. White with rage--something I had never seen before or since--he handed me the book. Read this, he said.
The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.
Speaking of which, go here for a list of numerous different variations that Taranto has had over the years. Funny guy.
If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he'd be President today
It floats.
The way our body is built, we'd be surprised if it didn't. The sheet of flat steel that goes underneath every Volkswagen keeps out water, as well as dirt and salt and other nasty things that can eat away at the underside of a car. So it's watertight at the bottom. And everybody knows it's easier to shut the door on a Volkswagen after you've rolled down the window a little.
That proves it's practically airtight on top. If it was a boat, we could call it the Water Bug. But it's not a boat, it's a car.
And, like Mary Jo Kopechne, it's only 99 and 44/100 percent pure. So it won't stay afloat forever. Just long enough. Poor Teddy. If he'd been smart enough to buy a Volkswagen, he never would have gotten into hot water.
|
I went to dinner a few weeks ago with a couple of moon-bats and they loathed Kennedy. Probably just as much as Bush.
Politics is a never ending game of education and reeducation. We may remember Ted Kennedy is a national disgrace but many Democrats are totally unaware of his history, or that of his family for that matter. Then again, after Bill Clinton and Hillary it appears there is no behavior beneath the Democrat party.
I still like your comment. Teddy is the gift that keeps on giving no matter what we do to cure it.
Thank you! I stand corrected. Also, for the link.
It's just become such a given that it's not discussed any more than the fact that the sun rises in the east.
It just is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.