The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts Tuesday night sent tremors through the political world. A wake up call was sent to the Washington establishment that Americans were, at the very least, concerned about the direction the country was heading. A Republican was able to pull off the unthinkable by taking on the Massachusetts Democratic machine and turning a seat that was once held by none other than Ted Kennedy into a seat that sustained the filibuster and blocked any hope of health-care reform. In a state where Democrats enjoy a three-to-one advantage in terms of voter registration, how could such a high profile Democrat lose when so much was on the line?
Perhaps the better question is how was Scott Brown able to convince the commonwealth of Massachusetts that he was the better candidate. While it's easy to categorize the Coakley-Brown race as just a stroke of luck, it is in fact a wake up call to the elite in Washington that conservatives are ready to fight. Along with a majority of independents, they see the policies coming out of Washington as simply not good for America. The race Tuesday night proved that with the right candidate willing to talk about the right issues, conservatives can win anywhere.
Conservatives are more energized than ever. Proof of this is that Brown got 63,823 more votes than John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. That's a six percent increase in a midterm election. What's more astounding is not only was this just a midterm election, it was a special midterm election which Charles Franklin, co-founder of pollster.com and professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points out as typically seeing an exceptionally small turnout. While six percent more voters turned out to vote for Brown than for McCain, 44 percent less people turned out to vote for Coakley than for Obama. It's unclear why exactly Democrats didn't turn out in the numbers they did in 2008, however why Republicans did turn out is less of a mystery.
It all started last spring when billions of dollars in bailouts significantly increased the national deficit. It took the much-maligned George Bush eight years to double the deficit, and if Barack Obama's current spending habits continue, it may take him less time to do more damage. This upset many conservatives and independents who remembered claims during the 2008 election that Obama would cut the national deficit in half. This led to what became known as the Tea Party movement, which quickly gained momentum throughout the country. The Tea Party demonstrations allowed conservatives and independents to voice their anger at the record spending that was going on in Washington.
The success of the Tea Parties and the constant mocking of the ""Tea Baggers"" unified the movement more than anything and set up the grassroots support that planted the seeds for the Brown victory. This grassroots support carried through the town hall meetings and through the healthcare debate all the way to Tuesday's election. Brown ran a campaign that successfully utilized this new grassroots support system, which didn't exist in the 2008 election. The last few days of the election, Tea Partiers were organizing phone banks across the country and making phone calls to Massachusetts Republicans and Independents urging them to get out and vote.
In addition to an energized grassroots movement, Scott Brown's ability to communicate and connect with the people of Massachusetts was truly impressive. His famous, ""It's not Ted Kennedy's seat... It's the peoples seat"" line won him instant popularity with many independents who voted for Obama in the previous election. It is also notable that Coakley had a series of gaffes, including calling future Red Sox hall of famer Curt Schilling a Yankee fan and saying nothing as a member of her campaign shoved a reporter to the ground who dared to ask her a question about her close ties with pharmaceutical lobbyists. Coakley's loss is also largely a product of the way Democrats have been handling healthcare legislation proceedings in the Senate and House. Democrats voted on health-care legislation in the dead of night on Christmas Eve and held backroom talks when Obama promised all talks would be aired on CSPAN. This further turned the key independents to Brown and put the final nail in the coffin of Coakley.
Scott Brown ran a terrific campaign that conservatives can use as a blueprint for success in the upcoming 2010 elections. The message that Tuesday's election sent will be talked about in the halls of Washington for months to come. What's clear is that conservatives are motivated and energized to fight for every seat in the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms. Scott Brown's victory showed that no seat is safe. Now the question is how will Democrats react to the stunning upset in Massachusetts.
Matt Payne is a sophomore majoring in Chinese and economics. Please send all responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
