Reagan Wins Big in Massachusetts!!

Well, not the man, of course. But the spirit and the philosophy of conservatism, championed by Ronald Reagan, won big time yesterday in the very Blue Bay State of Massachusetts. And, because of that, (to paraphrase a statement made by the First Lady during the '08 campaign,) I can say that for the first time in my recent memory, I have been proud of Blue State America.

Conservatism? Reaganism? You may think my analysis as off-base as Martha Coakley's comments on the Red Sox and the Yankees. But, contrary to much of the commentary floating about, especially the deranged sore-loserism on the far-left, Scott Brown's win is a victory for conservative principles.

How so? Brown ran his campaign on substance, on principles, promising the people of his state:

• That he would be the 41^st vote against Obamacare;
  
• That he was for cutting taxes and cutting spending to improve the economy and jobs;
  
• That he was for smaller, fiscally responsible government;
  
• That he was opposed to government takeover of the private sector;
  
• That he was opposed to the administration's weakening of our military defenses, including the giving of constitutional rights to terrorists.
  

Those in a nutshell are the key principles of conservatism. And, though last night's election may seem to be a wonder because of the history of democrat voting in Massachusetts, it's not that surprising that Brown's message caught on with voters there.

After all, Independents make up a large portion of the population of Massachusetts, as is the case across the country. Overall, Americans who describe themselves as liberals (not to be confused with all democrats) continue to make up only about 20-25% of the American public, while the remainder of Americans describe themselves as either moderates or conservatives.

But Obama and his supporters continue to say that yesterday's election has nothing to do with Obamacare and the rest of the big spending, big taxing Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. The excuses and fingerpointing and the throwing of Coakley under the bus, (which began even before the election results were in), can be summed up as follows:

• Coakley lost the personality contest: She's a plain Jane and he's hot. (True but irrelevant.)
  
• The Massachusetts voters were mad about bank bailouts. (Really? No one campaigned on that.)
  
• People are still reeling from the Bush years, and the Massachusetts voters were just expressing opposition to all incumbents. (When in doubt, blame Bush! Oh, by the way, Coakley was not an incumbent.)
  
• Coakley didn't campaign hard enough. (She denies this, and with all the other odds in her favor, she still should have won.)
  
• Massachusetts doesn't like to vote for female candidates. (Didn't they go for Hillary in the primary?)
  
• And, (my favorite), Massachusetts voters were just responding to their inner racist, subliminally appealed to by Brown with coded messages sent through images of his pickup truck.
  

I'll have to explain that last one as you are probably as clueless as I was when I first heard it.

Last night, just for fun, I tuned in to MSNBC, whose over-the-top ultra-liberal bias can always be counted on for some amusement. Usually I can't stand to listen to the likes of Chris Matthews or Keith Doberman-Pinscher for very long, but I assumed, rightly so, that they would be in full-blown whining, blaming, retreat mode. I was not disappointed.

Take a look at Keith Olbermann in this clip from his show, Olbermann's Rants, where he shared his deepest thoughts, chief among which is the conclusion that Scott Brown is a "homophobic racist" and that "Tea Baggers" are racists in disguise, just as decades ago, anti-civil rights southerners were racists who hid under the states' rights banner.

Funny, but I didn't know that there were hundreds of thousands of racists up there in Massachusetts ready to vote for one of their own kind. It's especially odd when you think that those racists who voted for Brown must have been among those who voted for Ted Kennedy for many years, since Kennedy routinely got about 70% of the vote.

I guess those former Kennedy voters just didn't realize they were racists until they picked up the "code" from seeing Scott Brown in his pickup truck. I'll let Mr. Olbermann and his talking head guest, Howard Fineman of Newsweek, explain.

On Olbermann's show last night, as Coakley was losing, Olbermann suggested to Fineman, who thought Keith posed a "good question," that perhaps Brown voters were really racists who didn't like the Obama agenda because Obama is black. (See the video at
Racists in Every Truck.)

It was a shame, but not unexpected since it was Fineman speaking, that someone from Newsweek would not slam this ridiculous comment at the outset. Instead, Fineman ran with the argument, rambling on about how "there are codes, there are images, there are pickup trucks…" and "you can say there's a racial aspect to it." (You can? Was that why Obama made fun of Brown's truck six different times during his Sunday rally for Coakley?)

Olbermann then chimed in with remembering how many times Brown had been photographed in that truck of his, and Fineman capped it off, recalling Fred Thompson in his pickup truck in Tennessee (I guess that made Thompson a racist, too), before concluding that racism probably wasn't the case in Massachusetts.

Somehow the fact that Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points (at a time when he was still black) didn't prevent Olbermann or Fineman from speculating that these same people who voted for Obama might be racists when they voted for Brown! And, folks, these people think they're the smart ones.

Fortunately, there are some democrats who are starting to "get" the real message from Brown's win. One is Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton and a lifelong democrat.

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, entitled "Blame the Left for Massachusetts," Davis states that: "This was a defeat not of the messenger, but of the message-and the sooner progressive Democrats face up to that fact, the better. It's the substance, stupid!"

Davis went on to state that the Democratic Party needs to "stop listening to the strident, purist base of our party" and adopt positions that are more centrist and bipartisan, to form:

"a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big government solutions." (Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2010, p. A15.)

It may be a vain hope for President Obama to start following that line of thinking, unfortunately, as the only time he seems to turn to the right is when he switches between teleprompter screens. Everything Obama has done since taking office has led away from the center and farther down the path to the far left, but he may find himself forced by the people to change his tack.

For this election was clearly a message of opposition to the Obama agenda of big government, private sector takeovers, higher taxes and higher spending, legislation obtained through closed door backroom deals and the buying of votes (Louisiana purchases and Nebraska buy-offs), all of which has been poised to be shoved down the collective throat of an unwilling public.

If this election is a defeat for Obama and the far left, it is yet not a victory for the Republican Party itself, except to the extent that it can return to conservative principles, the ones Scott Brown campaigned on, and the ones voted for by the people of Massachusetts.

To paraphrase Brown, this was "the people's win." But it was also a win for Reagan-style conservatism. In fact, you could say it was one for the Gipper!