Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Today's phrase: hoisted by their own petard

Are you enjoying the delicious irony of a Republican elected in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy's seat and cast the deciding vote to kill health care reform?

Well it didn't have to be this way but back in 2004 the Democrats on Beacon Hill changed the law stipulating that the governor would name a replacement for a vacancy in the Senate. At the time, Democrats were worried that John Kerry would win the Presidential race, allowing then-governor Mitt Romney to name a replacement. But if the Dems had just let the law stand, current governor Deval Patrick would have named the replacement for Ted Kennedy and we could have avoided this whole special election.

That's just delicious, that is.

2 comments:

SR said...

Another irony- if Ted Kennedy had resigned when he was diagnosed with his fatal tumor, or had resigned when he was definitely too sick to go vote in the Senate, the race would have been held in an atmosphere more favorable to Democrats. But it was "His" seat!

Eric said...

Yes, that's also true, since the race would have been in the aura of Obama's victory.