Will they never learn?

[pecunium]

Are they bloody daft? The real thing in Mass. was healthcare, and Obama (with Reid and Pelosi's help) giving the store to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

As they built the bill, the Republicans want it to pass, because the dog's breakfast they've created will please no one. Add that they are wimps when in... the minority, and allow the republicans to be bullies (when the Dems have the majority) and the results are a disaster.

Look at the polling: the US is a center left country (this is when you poll on issues, divorced of party), and the Republicans are a kleptocratic bunch of very right wing types and we are headed for failed state status.

Bowing to the Fox News agitprop wing of the Republican Party will only serve to more fully marginilize them. They need to grow some gonads and make a real difference beteween the parties.

I've seen things where the message the party is taking from this is, "We are too left, we have to move more 'to the center.'" Bullshit. The lesson to take from this is that when one's constituency is pissed off they vote for someone else, and situationally in the US there is only one other party to vote for. Becoming more like that party isn't going to make your constinuency happier with you, and gormless examples of spineless pandering isn't going to win votes from the other side.

That comes across as nothing more than a craven desire to suck on the public teat.

If they want to keep the votes of the people who aren't Republicans... they have to stop acting like Republicans.

Comments

[sethg]

Speaking as a Mass. resident (although one who doesn’t watch TV, so take my political analyses with a brick of salt) I don’t think the Mass. election was “about” health care. Both sides invoked it, but the overwhelming frame, to me, was that the state Democratic Party machine put up a candidate who was a mediocre politician, and expected that victory was hers by right; meanwhile, the Republicans put up a candidate who was charismatic, made at least a pretense of independence, and actually worked for his votes. The last time a Republican in this state beat a Democratic machine politician for an open statewide seat was 2002, when Romney became governor, and Romney’s campaign team went on to advise Brown.

(One complicating factor, w.r.t. health care, is that Massachusetts has a universal health-care system—the bill to implement it was signed by Romney!—roughly similar to the bills now before Congress. Nobody in either party seems to have any interest in repealing it, but I don’t see anyone swooning with delight over what we have, either.)

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

This is what people who live in the state keep telling me.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

As another Mass resident, I think this is exactly right.