BRUCE WALKER: HOW DEMOCRATS WIN SENATE SEATS
The Democrats have done it again. When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts and John Kerry was running for president, the ultra-partisan Massachusetts Legislature changed the law to remove from Governor Romney the right to appoint a successor to Kerry, if the senator should be elected president. The new law required, instead, that the people of Massachusetts elect the replacement for a departing senator. There was no grand public motive behind this new law: Democrats just did not want a Republican governor appointing a Republican to Kerry’s Senate seat.
Now a Democrat is governor and the law, until just now, required an election rather than an appointment to fill the seat vacated when Teddy Kennedy died. Does the Massachusetts Legislature trust the people to choose the replacement for Kennedy? No, in fact it is afraid that the people, if they chose the replacement for Kennedy, might elect a Republican. So the Democrats, concerned as ever only with power, changed the law so the Democrat Governor Deval Patrick can appoint Kennedy’s replacement until the special election next year.
How can democracy be expected to work when such naked partisanship governs the actions of the majority political party? Recall how Barack Obama’s senate seat was filled. “Blago,” who tried to auction off his senate seat, among other crimes, was arrested on December 9, 2009, while still governor of Illinois. Democrat leaders in the Senate, alarmed at the potential damage of this scandal in Obama’s home state, urged the Illinois Legislature to convene quickly and to amend the law which allowed Blagojevich to appoint a replacement for Obama and to require, instead, that a special election be held. There was, in public at least, strong bipartisan support for this.
This change in Illinois law had a good public policy reason: the chief executive who would otherwise name the new senator was a crook; he was actually arrested while in office. No one thought that he ought to appoint Obama’s replacement. That was in early December. Nothing happened. The Democrat-controlled Illinois Legislature had the authority, under Article IV, Section 5 of the state’s constitution to go into special session. But, for some odd reason…it did not. Then, on December 30th, about four weeks after the scandal broke, Blagojevich appointed a reliable Democrat hack, Rollin Burris, to replace Obama.
Why didn’t the Illinois Legislature do what everyone said was the right thing? Democrats might well have lost a special election. Democrats needed Burris’ vote in the Senate. There were loud cries of outrage by national Democrat leaders, who professed offense at this action by a creepy politician who had already shown that he deemed a Senate appointment as just a way to get money and power. But, for some odd reason…Senate Democrats, who had the power to keep Burris from taking his seat in the Senate, allowed him to be seated.
The contrast between Massachusetts and Illinois, both of whose legislatures Democrats control, is revealing. No one, not even the most partisan Democrat, has suggested that Mitt Romney was not a very honorable Governor of Massachusetts. Indeed, one of his great political strengths is that in his business, personal, and political life, Romney has been squeaky clean.
But he was a Republican. Blago, one of the most corrupt pols in modern political history, was a Democrat. So the laws were changed to prevent Romney from appointing a replacement for Kerry, but not changed to prevent Blago from appointed a leftist cipher to replace Obama in the Senate.
Democrats have controlled the Massachusetts Legislature for many decades and the last three speakers of the Massachusetts House of Representatives have been criminally indicted. The same legislature which seems unable to choose anyone but crooks as the presiding officer of the lower chamber, suddenly feels that the people of Massachusetts cannot be trusted to choose their own senator. Governor Patrick also has to cheat the people too: because the houses have not passed this sneaky bill by a two-thirds majority, Governor Patrick is compelled to declare this is an “emergency” under the state constitution. Otherwise the law would not be effective until December and the people of Massachusetts would have the right to reject this new law by a referendum petition. “What emergency?” ethical politicians might ask.
The stench is familiar: recall when Robert Torricelli ran for re-election in 2002? This incumbent senator won the Democrat primary and was under New Jersey law the lawful candidate of the Democrat Party. Criminal investigations of Torricelli were well known at the time of the June primary, but when Torricelli looked like he would win, even though nearly everyone thought him a crook, no Democrat, not a single Democrat in the state, challenged Torricelli in that June 2002 primary. Then these ethical problems began to make Torricelli weak in the polls.
What did New Jersey Democrat bosses do? They pushed Torricelli to “quit” and they “persuaded” the New Jersey Supreme Court to ignore state law and, shortly before the November election, existing New Jersey law and to put, in place of Torricelli, the aging warhorse, Frank Lautenberg as the Democrat nominee on the ballot. New Jersey law, of course, had a very good way of removing Torricelli as the Democrat nominee: someone could run against him in the primary and defeat him. The “crisis” arose when it appeared he would lose.
This is how Democrats win Senate majorities. Legislatures run by corrupt politicians change the law on senatorial succession and bad governors declare phony “emergencies.” Indicted governors pick United States senators. Lawfully nominated senate candidates “resign” and the party, not the Democrat voters of New Jersey, hand-pick his replacement and the state supreme court endorses this illegal action. The dreary pattern is the same: Democrats lust for a Senate majority, and they will cheat to get it.
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Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
http://outskirtspress.com/swastika_against_the_cross
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