The NA710N

It’s morning again in Massachusetts, for the first time in nearly half a century. Much like their compatriots in New Jersey, residents of the Bay State did not let the opportunity pass to send the Democrats a powerful message of voter self-respect: don’t take us for granted. The conservative media machine was in overdrive the morning after, trying to frame the victory for Republican Scott Brown—a popular state senator who made a name for himself as a nude Cosmopolitan centerfold and, later, questioning the legitimacy of the marriage that begot Barack Obama—as a referendum on the President and his policies. Perhaps for some voters this was the case, but when the opponent, Martha Coakley, runs a disastrous campaign that makes Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential bid look like Ronald Reagan’s 1984 sweep of America, the message goes beyond the individuals and straight to the party. The Democrats barely campaigned at all, only going into attack mode out of desperation late in the game. They barely had pollsters and did not run positive ads. They refused to believe there was any reason to.

The Democrats now have their work cut out for them, and the message is clear: the euphoria of the 2008 elections has long been forgotten in the midst of broken promises and questionable legislative maneuvering. Coakley leaves the election no more of a loser than when she entered it, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its leader, Senator Robert Menendez, have some soul-searching to do. It is the responsibility of the DSCC to lead Democratic candidates to victory in Senate campaigns. It is their job to intervene when the campaigns are not going so well, especially in critical races to the collective health of the Democratic Senate. Menendez was nowhere to be found in Massachusetts. In fact, he was busy touting the health care bill on MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Show. The rage from former (and highly successful) DCCC Chairman, the House equivalent, Rahm Emanuel towards Menendez must be palpable from miles away today.

But today is not a day to talk about Democrats. The Republicans have regained a Senate seat in conservative no-man’s land, and they have in Brown a likeable, reasonable right-winger. Given the implosion of the Democratic Party, that’s really all they need to run in 2012, yet it has proven their Holy Grail. Candidates that people like, for better or worse, tend to be bonkers. Candidates that make sense are boring and out of touch. While Brown personally falls a little on the crazy side, his political behavior and beliefs are as close to rational as the Right is going to find, and his personal appeal, especially to independents and moderate Democrats, is unparalleled in the current Republican lineup. Given the current power scheme in the party, it shouldn’t be surprising that Matt Drudge, patron saint of the Internet, nominated Brown for President merely minutes after his victory speech.

Although the most prominent talking point on the matter currently floating in the political ether is that the Democrats are the ones facing a major identity crisis, reality seems to convey the opposite. It is the Right, as the more relevant and powerful faction, that needs to sharply hone their message until it is as close to pitch perfect as it can be. For now—for midterm elections—the right-wing conglomerate will be enough to reel in the Congressional seats, since the Democrats are hammering the nails into their own graves. 2012 is a much different story; an election spearheaded by one person needs one very coherent message to win. Fortunately for the Right, besides a few fringe elements in the wing, the message is crystal clear: anti-big government, anti-socialism, pro-Constitution, pro-individualism. The bad news is that the loudest voice among the divisive fringe elements is the famous beauty pageant participant and sportscaster Sarah Palin, who currently controls the Republican Party. It’s hard to imagine she was too happy to see Saint Drudge sound the presidential siren for someone who isn’t her. For all the reasonable (albeit comical) rhetoric coming from Chairman Michael Steele and the leaders that actually paid their dues for their high positions, Palin—who was plucked from obscurity in a desperate scramble to find anyone but Joe Lieberman to run on the John McCain ticket—has had the last word on everything in the Right for the past year. Never has a failure been so successful; she is much more powerful than any Vice President should be.

And she is at the center of a vicious fight for the heart of the Republican Party, where everyone is keeping their friends close, and their enemies closer. Palin asks major rival Glenn Beck to host Saturday Night Live with her. Beck emphatically highlights how “similar” they are. Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee playfully teases that “we all hate you” in congratulating Beck on his television program’s first anniversary. Even marginal characters like Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, and Charlie Crist have been uncharacteristically (well, maybe not for Pawlenty, who has not been known to speak since assuming the Minnesota governorship) chummy. Meanwhile, Michael Steele raps about the big tent he’s building for all of them (,“baby”). This is the face of ideological warfare. 2012 is still relatively far, but Brown jumping into the fray in a quest for populist supremacy—one in which he is directly defying Palin— will make things much more complex, and much more entertaining. The fact that Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly prefer him to her (his likeability ratings hover around 60%, while hers are somewhere around 25%) is already a sign that, unlike her comments on election night, this was not a vote in favor of conservatism as she sees it. For moderates, libertarians, and true conservatives, the rise of a new opposition to Palin’s vain advances at our presidency is good news no matter who is taking the reins. Since her beliefs are the most detrimental to the coherence of the right-wing platform (Republican or Tea Party alike), dethroning her is a first priority. And if there’s anything to celebrate about this week’s elections, it’s that Massachusetts voters, in asserting their right as constituents to be presented with a reasonable campaign effort, have implicitly cast their votes against her, too. Maybe they were voting liberal after all.

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