Eye on Freedom

Commentators have speculated on the import of Scott Brown’s victory, the first by a Republican in a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts in over thirty years, and how it came to pass. Did voters resonate with Scott Brown’s folksiness and find his opponent Martha Coakley stiff? Sure. Was it a referendum on health reform for many? No doubt. A plurality of voters ranked health reform as their primary issue, an issue Massachusetts residents are intimately familiar with as ObamaCare has been described by no less a liberal commentator than Rachel Maddow as not being as progressive as RomneyCare, a program that garners positive reviews from only one third of Massachusetts residents. More than a victory over ObamaCare, Scott Brown’s victory signals a victory for common sense over the advancement of liberal idealism at all cost. It is a victory for those who want common sense solutions to health reform that will not bankrupt the country. It is a victory for the millions who marched on Washington in protest in September, less than a year into the presidency of a man who made history for the country and enjoyed the popularity of two out of three Americans on the day he was sworn into office. Today President Obama enjoys the confidence of less than half. It is a victory for all those who stood up in town halls in record numbers in sweltering August heat to say ENOUGH! The message of the Massachusetts Tea Party on January 19th was that President Obama’s interpretation of “we are the change that we seek” is resoundingly different than what the rest of us have in mind.

Scott Brown is a victory for common sense solutions in health reform which argue for targeted cost containment such as purchasing insurance across state lines and tort reform rather than 2000 page health care takeovers cloaked in the guise of “reform.” Scott Brown common sense Republicans understand 2000 page pieces of legislation are inherently unwieldy fraught with unintended consequences derived from backroom last minute deals cut with unscrupulous Senators and special interests. Scott Brown Republicans understand that people appreciate when you keep your word and have an abiding disdain for the hypocrisy of claiming to have the most open and transparent administration in history and negotiating backroom deals with the very same special interests you excoriated during the campaign and continue to excoriate. When Scott Brown Republicans promise to have negotiations on C-SPAN, they keep their promise!

Scott Brown is a victory for common sense solutions in national security as well. Scott Brown Republicans understand that when you have a terrorist in custody, especially one from a group you have limited knowledge about, it might be a worthwhile exercise to ask him a few questions so you can gain useful actionable intelligence about your enemy. Scott Brown Republicans know that before you engage the debate about how to handle uncooperative terrorists, it is worth asking him a question or two to determine what he knows and whether he might be cooperative. Scott Brown Republicans know that when you have a terrorist in custody who just tried to blow up an airplane, it might be worth a quick phone call to the Department of Homeland Security or the National Counterterrorism Center to see if they know who this guy is and have any useful advice about how to question him. Scott Brown Republicans appreciate that before categorizing a terrorist as a “lone wolf” and washing your hands of him, it might be worth five minutes of your time to see if that is really so, especially since he was caught trying to ignite a sophisticated explosive stored in his underpants which is not your everyday weapon of choice for the common criminal. Scott Brown Republicans know that when you have caught a terrorist dead to rights with explosives sewn into his underpants and a planeload of witnesses who saw him try to ignite them, it will not jeopardize your criminal case to treat him as a terrorist and ask him questions for a few days even if you ultimately try him as a common criminal. Scott Brown Republicans remember that the world did not begin the day George W. Bush was sworn in as President and that Al Qaeda attacked a U.S. Naval vessel in Yemen and leveled TWO U.S. Embassies in Africa long before the U.S. interned a single prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Consequently, Scott Brown Republicans appreciate that pretending that terrorists are not at war with us and handing them a propaganda coup by moving the prison to Illinois and allowing radical extremists to further radicalize the U.S. prison population will not make us any safer. Scott Brown Republicans appreciate that burying your head in the sand about the growing Iranian nuclear threat while extending olive branches that continue to wilt will not make us any safer either.

Finally, Scott Brown Republicans appreciate that we cannot spend our way to prosperity or create prosperity by dividing wealth and “spreading the wealth around.” When the President claims he wants to “pivot” to focusing on job creation after wasting an ENTIRE YEAR! focused on socializing the most advanced health system in the world, Scott Brown Republicans ask ‘where have you been all this time Mr President’, especially after you constantly remind us you inherited the worst economy since the great depression, or the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, whichever came later. Scott Brown Republicans do not believe the President’s empty rhetoric any more because that they understand that by taxing and regulating business to death, jobs for middle-class Americans die too.

Scott Brown Republicans stood up on January 19th and declared ENOUGH! Congressional Democrats and Republicans should understand that when Scott Brown declared on election night that there is no safe district in the country, he laid voice to what people of all stripes have been feeling across America for the entire year. When 10,000 people come together to rally against government spending in lower Manhattan last April, and thousands more stood up at town halls in August, and millions come from across the country to march on Capitol Hill in September, and voters tossed tax and spend policies on their head in Virginia and New Jersey and Massachusetts, politicians of all stripes are starting to realize that we are ALL Scott Brown Republicans. Congress and President Obama can try and obfuscate and deflect the anger at their peril.

- Editor, EyeOnFreedom.com