Those of you in a cave may not know the news – Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) passed away last night after battling a brain tumor. It is a sad day for his party, the Senate, and our country.
I’ll leave it to others to eulogize Sen. Kennedy. I recommend Baseball Crank’s take. For those of you who are thinking about taking cheap shots, listen to Michelle Malkin:
There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now.
Yes, there will be a nauseating excess of MSM hagiographies and lionizations — and crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death.
That’s no excuse to demonstrate the same lack of restraint in the other direction. Not now.
I do, however, disagree with Michelle about not talking about the generalities of the implications. First, nothing of significance changes in the Senate for the moment, even though the Senate is now short a member. Because of his illness, he was rarely in the Senate to provide the 60th anti-filibuster vote. Of course, the need for that has been an illusion; there were almost always enough “Republicans” to break up any filibuster.
The reason why it is merely for the moment is the Massachusetts ganders of the Democratic Party are meeting the goose’s sauce. They failed to reverse a screw job they planned for then-governor Mitt Romney (R) by taking away the power of the governor to appoint a temporary replacement until the next general election. Now, there will be a special election held between 145 days and 160 days from now.
Shortly after that point, the Democrats will, assuming Masachusetts does what it has done since 1976 and send a Democrat to the Senate, have 60 permanent members of their caucus. I have a bad feeling about the second session of the 111th Congress.
Revisions/extensions (10:15 am 8/27/2009) – Somehow had the wrong birth year for Kennedy. Mea culpa.
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(cough*toricelli*cough)
I bet a dollar they change the law and have the governor appoint his successor.
Included in that bet is that the law will be challenged, end up in the Mass supreme court and they’ll find it perfectly fine.
They can’t allow the people to vote for a candidate in their present, outraged state.
They might vote the wrong way.
Count on it.
There is that utter lack of respect for the law from the Party of the Rat. Shortly after I posted this, I saw a call from the House Press Organ of the DNC (aka the New York Times) to pull a Torch.
My prediction; they Torch the law by 9/14.