A Conservative Viewpoint - ‘Brown’ Truck Stops Liberal Agenda

Article by Bob Steinburg
- Edenton, North Carolina: Cradle of the Colony



Ok America. Wake up. What more proof do you need that only a year into the Obama (“Yes we can”) reign, voters are in revolt. Think I’m being an alarmist? Not when the U. S. Senate seat from Massachusetts that’s been in Democratic hands since 1953 has gone Republican. Former Sen. Teddy Kennedy has got to be turning over in his grave. Like the movie cliché: We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

How did the little known state Sen. Scott Brown, who drives an old pickup truck with over 200,000 miles on it and who possessed minimal achievements in his tenure as a legislator, win the battle of David vs. Goliath against the Democratic machine? Both parties will be looking for answers over the next several months.

Answers shouldn’t be hard to find. Brown was able to identify with the dissatisfaction voters were feeling with the direction of the country, opposition toward federal government activism and of course opposition to the Democratic healthcare proposals. He convinced a majority of voters he heard them and that if elected he would see these concerns would be addressed in Washington.

Democrats have been tone-deaf to the outcries of a center-right nation over the progressive agenda they are being asked to swallow without gagging. While everyone expected hope and change from this new administration, what they’ve seen thus far is nothing more than the same kind of social engineering liberals have always promoted to develop a utopian nanny state.

With unemployment in double digits Democrats opted to concentrate on cap-and trade to combat global warming. If enacted this would only exacerbate the jobless numbers. One of the great ironies of combating global warming in the midst of the “Great Recession,” is that the world is now in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record.

Next Democrats sought to gut the nation’s healthcare system in spite of 80 percent of Americans saying they are pleased with the insurance coverage they have. While many of these same people recognize there is a definite need for reform, they don’t want a complete makeover. Most voters are also angry at any prospect of a healthcare system that places the government in complete charge of their healthcare choices, while at the same time allowing it to control one sixth of the nation’s economy.

Nonetheless, the majority pressed forward in the Senate and barely passed a healthcare bill by bribing big labor and several Democratic Senators in sleazy back-room deals. This only further alienated an already skeptical and increasingly angry electorate.

What voters have seen from Washington in just over one year has run the gamut; from a failed near trillion dollar economic stimulus package to “Cash for Clunkers;” from wasteful earmarks to a lack of government transparency; from bank bailouts to corporate buyouts, voters have seen it all. In fact, the folks have probably witnessed more government intrusion into the private sector in the last 13 months than they’ve seen in a lifetime.

This current group of Democrats, in many ways akin to their free-spending Republican predecessors, seems incapable of exercising fiscal discipline. But this group has pushed the envelope so far they’ve created a national debt that is unfathomable. Future historians’ may look at this “era of excess” as the greatest fiscal sham ever thrust upon mankind by its overlords.

Many voters have been equally disappointed in this administrations approach to national security. They cannot understand why a president in the middle of a “War on Terror” would opt to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and release known terror suspects to return to their Middle East origins, to perhaps plot once more against [what they see as ] the Great Satan.

Equally perplexing was the absurd judgment of trying 9/11 terrorists in New York City. That decision was made by Attorney General Eric Holder, who also allowed the accused Christmas Day Pants Bomber to be read his Miranda rights and assigned an attorney, rather than held for questioning as a suspected terrorist.

Brown won against seemingly insurmountable odds because he found himself in the midst of a populist faction that had its origins last year in tea parties and town hall meetings. That grassroots effort was initiated to address the concerns conservatives, moderates, independents and like minded Democrats had with the progressive course being chartered for the nation, and the unwillingness of Washington to listen to their fears.

When they didn’t listen in Virginia, voters reacted by electing a Republican governor (along with a majority in the state legislature). On the same evening in New Jersey, disgruntled voters also elected a Republican governor who defeated a well financed incumbent Democratic opponent.

And then last week in Massachusetts- the state of Kennedy, Kerry and Dukakis, a Republican was elected to the U. S. Senate for a seat that had been occupied by a liberal Democrat for five decades.

The Democratic carnage is bound to continue until this president and members of his party begin to understand the stakes; either move this country back to center right or risk your political careers coming to an abrupt end this November.

Republicans are understandably jubilant about last Tuesday’s election, recognizing the tremendous impact Brown should have on politics and policy. But Brown and his fellow Republicans had best remember it was independent voters who delivered Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts to their column. These voters are vocal, they are organized and they understand, perhaps more than either major party that America works best under two-party rule. In their minds it’s no longer about yesterday and who did what, but rather about America: today, tomorrow and always.