As Goes Massachusetts?

This post is written by guest author Edward Mahee. Mr. Mahee has an extensive legal background, and is an emerging conservative thinker. This is his eighth posting for the site.

As goes Massachusetts, so goes the country?  In usual times, such a statement would be greeted as a joke.  After all, Massachusetts is seen not as a political bellwether, but as a reliable strong hold of big-government liberalism.  But these are not usual times, and this is not a usual election.  Regardless of the result in Tuesday’s special election to replace the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy, the fact that the race is worth paying attention to is suggestive of a truth that many don’t want to come to grips with: The American people, including many Democrats, are not willing to endure liberalism’s heavy hand too long.

Polls overwhelmingly demonstrate that voters have bristled at the prospect of President Obama’s health care initiative becoming law.  The hostility can be explained by ever growing frustration at policies employed by the Democratic leadership in Washington, a group which has piled up debt at record rates without addressing the core national concern of job creation. Despite growing unrest over the economy, the deficit, and unemployment, Democrats have forwarded monumentally expensive entitlements bred of their ideological desire to control.  Unfortunately for them, they have to stand for election and explain themselves. 

Voters have been unimpressed.  When forced to defend liberal big government, Democrats have been flatly unsuccessful.  In elections and public opinion polls, voters are expressing their extreme displeasure.  Even in deep blue Massachusetts, the home of the liberal lion Ted Kennedy, voters appear to have had enough of big government liberalism in Washington.

At the beginning of last year, we were promised a new politics and a new path to prosperity.  Americans waited with anticipation as our new leaders set to work to figure out how to put America back on the path to prosperity.  Americans gave the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Obama and his allies when they promised a new kind of post-partisan politics, a politics that would remove us from the era of his maligned predecessor.  One year in, however, the people have lost patience with Mr. Obama.  And the reason is simple: His policies have been expensive and have produced no results. 

Now, having to fight an unexpectedly difficult race in Massachusetts, Democrats have been warning voters that their Republican opponents will simply take us back to the policies of George W. Bush.  If Republicans revert back to the former President’s policies, Democrats will be correct.

For Republicans to take full advantage of the electoral winds at their back, they need to push a strong conservative agenda promoting policies designed to unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit.  This will address the most acute concern of voters—jobs.  Republicans need to articulate the message that free markets and free enterprise drive prosperity and wealth creation.  By reducing the size of government and reducing the tax burden on individuals and employers, Americans will take the economic risks necessary to make innovation and job creation worth while. They need to explain that the price of big government is the removal of rewards of economic success; big government doesn’t make economic success worth the effort. Voters have demonstrated they care about the economy, not entitlements.

Democrats will counter that such policies failed during the Bush years.  They neglect to mention that George W. Bush was not truly conservative.  He did cut taxes, but he spent too much and was too enamored with big government.  Republicans need to articulate an authentic conservative message that says freedom in the hands of free people is the surest way to preserve and enhance American prosperity. 

Voters are willing to support such a platform; they have shown as much in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts.  Conservatism isn’t perfect, but a limited federal government which leaves the people free to work, worship, and associate as they see fit is much preferable to the alternative of being wards of the almighty state.

-Edward Mahee for TruPolitics.net