Rattled Dems fret over health of Senate seat
By Howie Carr | Thursday, January 14, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
It’s all about health care.
The race to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate has come down to one issue, and it’s not Sen. Ted Kennedy’s “legacy.” It’s the misshapen health-care bills that have scared the bejesus out of an ever-growing majority of American voters, even in this bluest of states.
Asked his view of the bill, the Republican candidate, state Sen. Scott Brown, says succinctly: “It kinda stinks.”
A month ago, he was 30 points behind his Democratic opponent, the don’t-make-no-waves attorney general, Martha Coakley. She was cruising, playing the one card she never leaves home without - the gender card.
Then the specifics of ObamaCare started leaking out. The cuts in Medicare - $500 billion, or as Brown prefers to say, “half a trillion dollars.” Then the state’s union members began to hear about the president’s insistence on a 40 percent tax on their “Cadillac” health care plans.
Overnight, the old dichotomies, Democrat-Republican, red-blue, lost their resonance. This has become a struggle for self-preservation - medical and fiscal. As the old folk song goes, Which side are you on?
“This race affects everyone - everyone,” Brown says over and over again. “Forget about the letter after my name. If I win, this broken health-care bill goes back to the drawing board.”
Which is why the city was buzzing yesterday with unconfirmed reports that Barack Obama may have changed his mind about staying out of the race. The rumor was that he may fly into Boston this weekend on behalf of the flailing Coakley, whose lead in the latest poll has shrunk to two points. Coakley is still favored to win, but what Brown calls “the machine” is stunned. In the most recent Rasmussen poll, Brown leads Coakley among independents 71-23.
“They are in an absolute panic mode,” one prominent Bay State Democrat was saying yesterday. “They don’t care if bringing in Barack energizes the Republicans and independents - how much more energized can they get? Obama’s people have to get the minority vote out, and Coakley sure can’t do it herself. It’s risky, but it may be the only way now to save her.”
The national Democrats are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in the final days. On TV and radio here, Scott Brown’s first name is now “Republican,” as in “Republican Scott Brown.” The SEIU, moveon.org, NARAL - all the usual suspects are on board. The “A” word - abortion - is heard once more in the land. But Coakley’s first 30-second hit piece fell a bit flat when, at the end, the campaign misspelled the name of her state as “Massachusettes.”
“Maybe Martha should talk to some people who actually live here,” Brown said yesterday.
The deluge of attack ads began a couple of hours after the final debate Monday night, just after Coakley left the spin room. She’d turned in yet another lackluster performance, informing the audience that there were no terrorists left in Afghanistan, two days after one of the slain CIA operatives was buried in nearby Bolton, and on the same day that three U.S. servicemen were killed in the war that she seems to think is over.
But Brown won the debate when he fielded a question from the hyper-liberal moderator, David Gergen, who asked him how he could possibly vote to kill health care while sitting in Ted Kennedy’s seat.
“With all due respect,” Brown told the Sunday chat-show fixture, “this is not Ted Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”
Brown was in the midst of an Internet “money bomb” fund-raiser, and after slapping down Gergen, by the end of the night he had raised $1.3 million - $800,000 above the campaign’s goal.
In the state’s suburban town halls, voters are lining up to get absentee ballots, just in case the weather takes a turn for the worse Tuesday. For example, in Yarmouth, on the Cape, during the primary last month, 183 residents voted absentee. By Monday, the number of absentee ballots given out in Yarmouth was 543. It’s the same in all of the more conservative cities and towns.
Despite the bitter January cold, the Brown campaign has been swamped with volunteers. On the weekends, there are Brown “standouts” at every major intersection. Representing a gerrymandered, heavily Democrat district in the state Senate, Brown is used to having his yard signs disappear, but this time there’s a difference.
“My own supporters are stealing them from each other,” he said. “They say, I need it more than you. I live on a busier street.”
The Democratic establishment is relying on yesterday’s tactics. On Tuesday night, a reporter for the Weekly Standard was assaulted outside a Coakley fundraiser in D.C. by a Democrat operative. The video was quickly posted on the Internet, but the Boston Globe, the Kennedy family house organ, pretended it was still 1973. Their headline: “Reporter takes stumble.”
Just like Martha Coakley. She may yet hang on to win, but even she does, one thing is certain. As Scott Brown said, it’s not Ted Kennedy’s seat anymore.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225447
Yet another Howie column...ping
Scott Brown present in absentee voters’ minds
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 15, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Oh yes, the “stalkers” are out there. Just ask Martha Coakley, the wrinkly attorney general who is not “privy” to the facts of the assault on the reporter on Capitol Hill, or so she says.
Yes, the stalkers are out there, and what they are stalking is the state’s city and town halls, taking absentee ballots. Let’s go straight to the numbers, as of closing time Wednesday afternoon.
We can begin with my own hometown, Wellesley. In one business day, Wednesday, the number of absentee ballots cast went from 741 to 869. Next door, in Weston, the number went from 341 to 437.
Are these Scott Brown voters, or are these moonbats who are voting for Martha Coakley because they’re wondering where the heck did she get that accent, coming from “struggling” North Adams and all?
I’m not saying Scott Brown is going to win Tuesday. All I want to do here is pass on some of the numbers of absentee ballots in various towns over the past 48 hours:
Newton, 1158 as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, to 1490 Wednesday
Plymouth, 787 to 921
Scituate, 407 to 509
Weston, 341 to 437
Weymouth, 537 to 661
It becomes increasingly clear, Scott Brown is winning among the people who work for a living, as opposed to Democrats, who are Martha’s voters.
You want some more absentee numbers, and how they increased from Tuesday until Wednesday?
Marlboro, 738 to 822
Southboro, 159 to 249
Waltham, 517 to 674
Needham, 554 to 699
Falmouth, 1044 to 1194
Chelmsford, 604 to 782
This is one day, mind you. A working day, as opposed to a Democrat day - a Martha Coakley day.
At this point, it’s too late for the Democrats to pull out the absentee vote. Oh sure, the local city and town halls are open today, but in a lot of the Democrat municipalities, the city halls close at noon. Do you know what they call afternoon in the welfare cities?
Morning drive.
Let’s be clear here, Brown-Coakley is a fight between the working classes and the nonworking classes. If you have a job, if you pay your own way, then you’re for Scott Brown. If you’re a moonbat, or a hack, or an illegal alien, or if you have a trust fund or are from New York (or most likely both) then you’re for Martha.
Are the nonparasites of Massachusetts still the majority? We’ll know soon enough.
But look on the bright side, layabouts. If we win, we’ll still have to go to work Wednesday. And you won’t.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225744