Politics and Government in America

Senator Edward Kennedy passed away yesterday.  This man did more to advance liberalism in this country than pretty much any other Democrat in Congress.  Because of the tragedy that seemed to haunt his family, all you had to do was attach Teddy’s name to a bill and it would pass for purely sentimental reasons.

Ironically, Senator Kennedy’s most long lasting legacy may be the one that he didn’t want. Back in 2004,  when John Forbes Kerry was running for president, Sen. Kennedy used his influence to get the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a bill striping the governor, then Republican Mitt Romney, of the power to appoint a replacement to the Senate. At the time it was a very pragmatic political decision.

Today, that effort may turn out to be Sen. Kennedy’s biggest blunder. Until a special election can be held in November, under the laws of Massachusetts, Sen. Kennedy’s seat will remain empty. This creates a slight shift in the balance of power in the Senate. It means that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster proof majority and that the growing cracks in the Democrat party are going to become even more stressed.

It also means that the special election that is going to take place will perhaps be a prelude to next year’s midterm election. Everyone will expect the Democrats to hold that seat, it has been Democrat since 1953 when Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. lost the seat to John Kennedy.  However, Sen. Kennedy seemed to know something the rest of us don’t because he spent the last few weeks of his life pushing to have the law, that he originally pushed, repealed.

Perhaps we are  about to see a revitalization of the Republican Party, and more importantly the conservative movement. Senator Kennedy seemed to think so. We can all see the anger tha is building in the country and the way that the Democrats are responding to it. Rather than accepting that there is legitimate concern and anger of the waste and wild spending in Washington, they are calling the American people angry mobs, comparing them to the KKK and Nazis, and telling them to sit down and shut up. The Democrats are rapidly becoming the authoritarians that they accuse Republicans of being. Perhaps Sen. Kennedy’s legacy will be the start of the next Republican revolution.