Rise of the Massachusetts Right: Scott Brown Was Only the Beginning

by Charles C. Johnson

The Chowdah Revolution is far from over, if recent reports are read critically.

And its scent has been picked up as far afield as Rhode Island and down on the Cape.

Delahunt with his "excellent friend"

Delahunt with his "excellent friend"

This past week Congressman Patrick Kennedy announced that he will not be seeking reelection, ending 50 years of Kennedy incompetence in federal government. Like his father, the younger Kennedy had a strong penchant for strong drinks and driving — although he seems to have enjoyed pills as well.

Today, The Boston Globe reports that Cape Cod congressman Bill Delahunt (MA-10) might be the next to go. The Boston Globe seems to think that Delahunt’s ties to Chavez and a controversial home heating program will be helpful to him in his possible re-election bid. I have my doubts.  Two weeks ago, I wrote an analysis of Delahunt’s weaknesses. Here’s an exercept:

According to the book, Congress and Its Members, on p. 72, Bill Delahunt raised the least amount for the incumbents, only a meager $93,956, placing him as the least fundraising incumbent.

On the policy issues, Delahunt is particularly vulnerable. Here are just a few instances. . . .

At the same time that Europe is running away from massive subsidies for solar power (especially Germany and Spain), The Wall Street Journal reports “two House Democrats, Jay Inslee of Washington and Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, are drafting legislation that would create European-style tariffs for solar power.”

But Delahunt is a fierce opponent of the Cape Wind project because of subsidies. He wrote that the Cape Wind project is “a $2 billion project that depends on significant taxpayer subsidies while potentially doubling power costs for the region.”

Now anyone hoping to get elected in the 10th congressional district ought to oppose Cape Wind, for the simple reason that you don’t put a wind farm in paradise, but Delahunt’s reasoning here is also suspect. He wants to pick and choose between industries, rather than letting the market decide.

Historically, Delahunt has used his personal relationship with dictator Hugo Chavez to help bring oil to folks in need in Massachusetts. (He has referred to Chavez as an “excellent friend.”) But currently oil prices are at historic lows. I don’t think he can continue to count on those dependent on subsidized fuel prices to support him. He is, to put it in the language of economics, an “inferior good.”

In 2005, Delahunt offered a “profound thank you” for that oil, and commented that it demonstrated Chavez’s “willingness to assist low-income citizens here in Massachusetts [and that it] truly demonstrates what good corporate citizenship is all about.” (Jon Keller, The Bluest State, p. 109) But Massachusetts voters might rightily ask how things might be better still if Chavez’s country were more free. Maybe we’d get even lower prices as he tends to withhold production.

The Democrats are particularly vulnerable in Massachusetts, I know, because I have lived among them. I know the Massachusetts elites because for years, I was among them.

I hail from the Bay State, but currently attend school in California. My heart, though, lies in the Commonwealth, despite its problems.  I never met another Republican until I was fifteen. There were three members of the Young Republicans and well over one hundred members of the Campus Democrats at my far left prep school, Milton Academy. We were constantly harassed by then-Principal and later Head of School, Rick Hardy, who disciplined me for offending someone on a campus messageboard after I had argued that she, a foreign student, must like the supposedly racist America, if she were attending school in the states.

This is a place where the ne’er-do-well Governor Deval Patrick and Ted Kennedy are distinguished alums. The campus invited, and then disinvited then-Governor Mitt Romney because some gay faculty members were concerned that it would be like inviting Hitler to campus, given his anti-gay marriage views. Yes, that really happened.

I predict that Massachusetts politics will swing more to the center now that Ted Kennedy is gone. During his time in office, Ted Kennedy was a workhorse, he effectively marshalled all of the Massachusetts delegation to deliver federal money to the state. Unlike Senator Kerry, who routinely ignores his constitutents, Kennedy really did deliver the goods in a timely manner for a state that runs on Pork. (Big Dig, anyone?)

But with Kennedy gone, these politicians who rode on his coattails are going to have to stand on their own two feet. Many of them would prefer to sit it out. And really, who could blame them? A recent poll shows the flawed Republican Joe Malone winning in a matchup with Delahunt.


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Posted Feb 14th 2010 at 10:01 am in Congress, News, Politics | 187 Comments