Punch line: tax payers are no longer going to tolerate lying, cheating, secret-dealing, ineffective government operatives.
Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback was a defining moment — even the people of Nebraska — the beneficiaries of the special deal — rejected it as just plain wrong.
Imagine … a constituency that can’t be bought off.
* * * * *
WSJ: The New Political Rumbling Massachusetts may signal an end to old ways of fighting , Peggy Noonan, Jan. 21, 2010
In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look.
If you were a normal human sitting at home … chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the bed, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps.
The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.
In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort.
In 2009 and 2010, they looked at Obama’s general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations — health care, cap and trade — and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, “Uh-oh, he’s a Nut!”
Which meant they were left with the Creeps.
The contest between the Nuts and the Creeps may be ending.
The Nuts just got handed three big losses, and will have to have a meeting in Washington to discuss whether they’ve gotten too nutty.
But the Creeps have kind of had their meetings — in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. And what seems to be emerging from that is a new and nonsnarling Republicanism.
We’ll see …
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575017503811443526.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
The Homa Files 
January 22, 2010 at 8:08 am |
The real issue here is that America should stop giving power to one party – it doesn’t mean that consensus is always right, but at least, it will reflect what people are comfortable with and will usually be incremental change.