Tag: massachusetts

Sir Donald Berwick (D) to run for Governor of Massachusetts. …That’s *Massachusetts*.

You know.  That place with the hill?

Best known, of course, for his advocacy of (and eventual fall over) health care rationing, Sir Donald Berwick has modestly decided to run for Governor of Massachusetts:

“As a doctor, an educator, an innovator and someone who has dedicated his professional career to making things work better and to helping people – I am ready to lead,” the Newton Democrat said in a statement announcing his candidacy.

In other news, NSTAR announced likely lower rates for its Boston customers, thanks to new energy production estimates that take into account increased output from its new Granary Burying Ground facility.  Turns out that the kinetic energy that can be currently derived from Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Otis, Robert Paine, and Paul Revere spinning in their graves is enough to power several turbines.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*No, he really was knighted.

PS: MASSACHUSETTS.

PPS: I have been asked to note that “a statewide election featuring an architect of some of the most unpopular features of Obamacare ought to be a big honking signal in the sky for Scott Brown to enter this race.” …True, that: he should.

Of *course* Ed Markey is hiding from Massachusetts voters.

This is a surprise?

While Republican Gabriel E. Gomez held nine public events this week, his Democratic rival, Edward J. Markey, held none, sparking criticism from Gomez that the veteran congressman is ignoring voters and avoiding the public eye.

“He’s been hiding,” Gomez said Friday, during a stop at Mul’s Diner in South Boston.

The last thing that Ed Markey wants to do is to have independent voters take a gander at him.  Besides, Ed Markey’s currently campaigning in a state that was recently the victim of a vicious Islamist terrorist attack; it’s a little hard to reconcile being born-again on national security when you’re on the record as opposing the Patriot Act and in favor of trying terrorists on American soil, and easy as pie to just simply not do any public appearances.  The polls are frankly not telling Ed Markey that he should relax just quite yet; apparently his campaign has decided to try to run out the clock.  And maybe that will work; while the Suffolk poll from last week is increasingly looking like an outlier, Gabriel Gomez has yet to pass Markey in the polls.

Still.  You’d think that Markey would get out more.

 

“It’s time Ed Markey got a REAL job.”

I find this NRSC ad to be highly entertaining and symbolic of the problems that come from tapping a safe-district (for decades) Congressman for a statewide seat:

Short version: Ed Markey wrote a metric buttload of bad checks on a Congressional bank back in 1992*.  Markey got away with it at the time – the aforementioned safe district – but now, well, he’s running for Senate, and so he pretty much has to finally explain why he did such a thing in the first place.  Well, we already know why – all the other Democrats were doing it – but Markey’s gotta come up with an excuse, anyway.  You know.  Just for the look of the thing.

Moe Lane

PS: Gabriel Gomez for Senate.  He didn’t write bad checks covered by your tax money.

*Please, Democrats.  By all means, try to explain that away.

Ed Markey: foolish on Benghazi. Foolish on the Boston Marathon bombing, too?

I’d like everybody to pay close attention to this Tweet:

It’s from back in October of 2012, when – as Legal Insurrection very helpfully notes – Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts (D) (now running against Gabriel Gomez in a special election for MA-SEN) was doing his level best to convince the world that there was absolutely no reason at all to believe that the attack in Benghazi that murdered four Americans (including our Ambassador) was due to a preplanned terrorist attack – and that any suggestion that the White House was covering things up was some sort of bizarre theory promulgated by conservatives. That’s October of 2012.  Now let’s go to May of 2013: Continue reading Ed Markey: foolish on Benghazi. Foolish on the Boston Marathon bombing, too?

QotD, Hell Hath No Fury Like A Democrat Encountering A Minority Conservative edition.

The Boston Herald’s Jennifer Braceras, being commendably forthright about what’s about to be directed at MA-SEN candidate Gabriel Gomez:

[Gabriel Gomez is] new to politics, so I’ll be blunt. Democrats may dislike Republicans, but they despise Republican minorities.

…Yup.  And Democrats – more accurately, white, male, Anglo, liberal Democrats – get remarkably little internal pushback from that.  Or perhaps it’s not so remarkable; that word sort of implies that this is somehow a new thing.  Ach, well, professional progressives.  As the philosopher once said: can’t live with them, pass the beer nuts.

(H/T: Instapundit)

It’s Gomez v. Markey in the Massachusetts Senate Special election.

Gabriel Gomez is a former Navy SEAL and current businessman; Ed Markey is a fairly cookie-cutter Massachusetts Congresscritter who has been in Congress for as long as my wife has been alive.  Markey’s probably best known for writing that ridiculous carbon tax bill Waxman-Markey that Harry Reid gulped and buried in a mineshaft; unless, of course, you score “comparing Citizens United to Dred Scott” as being higher, lower, or Just Plain Dumber on the scale of goofball ideas.

Can Gabriel Gomez win?  Sure.  Will he win, absent Massachusetts Republican support?  No.  It all depends on how hungry people are for the seat. And what their priorities are. ‘Course, I’m in Maryland these days, where the problem is, if anything, more acute…

Moe Lane

Ed Markey’s increasingly useful stupid rhetoric on Citizen United and the Dred Scott decision.

Yeah, I think that Massachusetts Senate hopeful Ed Markey’s (D, MA-05) going to have more problems in his primary than he thought that he was going to have in his primary.

Representative Edward J. Markey refused to back down Thursday from comments he made this week that seemed to compare the US Supreme Court’s ruling on campaign finance law to the high court’s 19th-century Dred Scott decision, a notorious pro-slavery ruling.

Because let’s see who the Boston Globe quoted in response. Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III of the Ella J. Baker House and Boston TenPoint Coalition called this a “somewhat revisionist approach to the Dred Scott case” (Translation: What the heck, Markey?). Reverend Talbert W. Swan II of the Springfield NAACP tried to polish the excrement a little, but concluded “I don’t think campaign ­finance can be compared to the subjugation of an entire people” (translation: What the heck, Markey?).  The Reverend William E. Dickerson II of Dorchester’s Greater Love Tabernacle noted that “We minimize the issue of the Dred Scott decision when we try to juxtapose it [with lesser issues]” (translation: What the he… oh, you get the point). And, of course, there was Stephen Lynch (Markey’s major opponent in the Democratic primary), who took time out from laughing at Markey’s gaffe to solemnly assure the world that while of course he feels that Citizens United should be overturned via a Constitutional amendment* (while still taking that dirty, dirty corporate campaign money, of course) he doesn’t think that it was anything as bad as the Dred Scott decision. Continue reading Ed Markey’s increasingly useful stupid rhetoric on Citizen United and the Dred Scott decision.

Ed Markey: taking that sweet, sweet slaveholder money!

…Well, it logically follows, right?

Rep. Ed Markey on Tuesday compared the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign finance decision to the 1858 Dred Scott decision upholding slavery during a campaign speech in Pittsfield, Mass.

[snip]

Citizens United […] is a 2010 high court decision gutting much of the McCain Feingold campaign finance law limiting the ability of corporations to spend money on campaigns. The ruling paved the way for the host of Super PACs that spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2012 campaign.

Just one little wrinkle to that stance: Continue reading Ed Markey: taking that sweet, sweet slaveholder money!

Huh. I guess Scott Brown’s running for Governor of MA next year.

I am legitimately surprised…

Former Sen. Scott P. Brown, the Massachusetts Republican unseated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012, announced Friday he will not run in the Senate special election to fill the seat held by Sen. John Kerry.

“Over these past few weeks I have given serious thought about the possibility of running again, as events have created another vacancy requiring another special election. I have received a lot of encouragement from friends and supporters to become a candidate, and my competitive instincts were leading in the same direction,” he said in a statement.

“Even so, I was not at all certain that a third Senate campaign in less than four years, and the prospect of returning to a Congress even more partisan than the one I left, was really the best way for me to continue in public service at this time. And I know it’s not the only way for me to advance the ideals and causes that matter most to me,” he said.

Continue reading Huh. I guess Scott Brown’s running for Governor of MA next year.

So, John Kerry for SecState.

I first saw this reported by the New York Times; it was later confirmed by the President.  Well… elections have consequences, huh?  Here’s one.  And I’ll be honest: I don’t think that we can derail this nomination, particularly if we want to also derail the nomination of apparently-not-too-fond-of-teh-gays-either Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.  There’s a finite amount of political capital available; some of it got spent killing the Susan Rice nomination; Kerry is merely seriously despised on one side of the aisle, while Hagel-loathing is shaping up to be more bipartisan; and if we pop Kerry out of that seat we could very well replace him with a Republican – and don’t undervalue that: Scott Brown stays bought.

Yeah, I know.  I’d love to torpedo this one, too.  But we’re on a budget, here.

Moe Lane