Because I cannot in good faith vote for a candidate who had the chance to put away the degenerate pederast Father John Geoghan in 1995 and did not, opting instead to cut a closed-door deal and allow Geoghan to hunt young boys for another seven years. You can excuse this away by saying these types of prosecutions just weren’t happening yet if you feel you must, but only if you acknowledge that these prosecutions weren’t happening because lawyers with lofty political ambitions, such as Martha Coakley, refused to prosecute.
Because after giving him every chance to win me over, the fact is that I want to like Scott Brown much more than I actually like Scott Brown.
Because saving the Democratic super-majority in the Senate is not a good enough reason when the Democrats served up a candidate who has proven so ineffective that she may very well lose what was once Ted Kennedy’s seat in what is one of the bluest states in the union. This campaign could have and should have been a cakewalk. That it is this close in its final days is madness. There are simply no good reasons to vote for Coakley the candidate – only semi-decent reasons to not vote against the party itself. The Democrats chose to make this bed and now they may be forced to die in it.
Because if elected, Scott Brown will take his marching orders and get his talking points from Limbaugh and Beck and Ailes the same way every other member of the GOP in Washington has since Barack Obama took office. Any Republican who can become a Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will instantly be a rising star in the party. Scott Brown knows this. He will fall in line, say and do what he is told, and set his sights on the VP spot in 2012 or 2016.
Because the man who could have been a reasonable alternative, third-party candidate Joseph L. Kennedy, proudly boasts that he is “The Tea Party Candidate”. Where were the Tea Partiers during the spending sprees of George W. Bush? They were exactly where they will be if the GOP retakes the White House in two years: going along for the ride. If we had a “Birther” candidate in the race they wouldn’t seem any more or less ridiculous than this guy.
Because maybe, just maybe, somebody should kill this healthcare bill before it becomes the law of the land nationwide. As of January 1st I pay $160 a month in blood money to my insurance company because it already is the law of the land here in Massachusetts. That is a whopping 12% more than I paid in 2009. (Will that figure go up or down if Obama’s plan survives the Senate? I don’t really know, and I’m betting you don’t either.) If this race is going to be about healthcare alone in its final days, in a place that only a few years ago watched then-Governor Mitt Romney team up with the uber-liberal state legislature to force what became the blueprint for Obama’s plan down our throats, then Martha Coakley is in even more trouble than her latest poll numbers indicate.
Because no matter what we choose to call it, we are not now nor have we ever been talking about Universal Healthcare in this country. What we refer to as Universal Healthcare is simply health insurance that is mandated by law. It will be the law that you must kickback a percentage of your hard-earned wages to a massive conglomerate each and every week – and that conglomerate will do anything and everything its considerable power to not pay out should you or a family member get sick. The business model is the same one used by the mafia in shakedowns and explained by Henry Hill in the movie
Goodfellas:
“Lost your job? Fuck you, pay me.”
“Car broke down? Fuck you, pay me.”
“Kids are sick? Fuck you, pay me – and oh by the way, your claim has been denied.”
(Socialized medicine this will not be.)
Because despite all of my feelings on healthcare and despite Scott Brown being dead set against supporting the bill, it does nothing to make him a more appealing option. Because even though Brown has vowed to kill Obama’s healthcare plan in 2010, he eagerly voted YES on Romney’s initiative in 2005. Why the change of heart? Because one was proposed by a Republican while the other was proposed by a Democrat. The consequences of neither bill mattered to Scott Brown. Party loyalty came first, while what was good for his constituents ran a distant second. Brown certainly was not alone in that on Beacon Hill and would not be alone in Washington. However, in Washington that loyalty would be to a party led largely by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Christian right. Say what you will about John Kerry, but he doesn’t check in with Sean Hannity before casting a vote. Will Scott Brown, as a rising young star in the GOP, be able to say the same?
Because all of this is a just a long-winded way of saying that not a one of these choices is any damn good, that neither candidate will be anything more than a servant to the powers-that-be in their respective parties, and that we deserve better. Much better. But we aren’t going to get better. What we are going to get is either Coakley, Brown, or Bizarro Kennedy.
And we will all be worse off than we were a few months ago.
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