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People watch hockey games because they like the action and some have a lot of knowledge and understand the minute intricacies of the game. But there are those who watch hockey simply to see fights break out and the hopefully ensuing blood that is spilled. The same can be said of watching political debates. While political junkies watch with avid interest and judge the nuance of every back and forth exchange, there are those that simply watch in anticipation of the knockout punch that seldom ever comes.

In Canada, where federal elections are held about every four years or whenever the prime minister or the opposition feels like having one, these so called knockout punches are few and far between. There have only been a couple of them in recent memory. 

Scott Brown scored one of these rarities in his debate with Martha Coakley. David Gergen, CNN’s answer to an impartial moderator, asked Brown how he could sit in Ted Kennedy’s seat and vote against the healthcare bill. In a country where Kennedy was and still is idolized by the left, Gergen’s view was that voting by someone occupying the seat once held by Kennedy and contrary to the way he would have voted was somehow sacrilegious. Brown shot back that it wasn’t Ted Kennedy’s seat and it wasn’t the Democrats’ seat – it was the people’s seat. Brown’s retort to Gergen has been compared to Lloyd Bentsen’s shot at Dan Quayle during the 1988 vice presidential debate. After Quayle mentioned John F. Kennedy, Bentsen shot back that he knew and worked with Kennedy and said, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

While it is unlikely that Brown’s reply resulted in his victory any more than Martha Coakley’s comment that former Red Sox star Curt Schilling was a Yankees fan, the notion of a senate seat belonging to the people resonated with the voters and those who were hoping for a Brown victory. Should the Republicans make substantial gains in the House and the Senate in November, Brown’s comments will undoubtedly be constantly referred to as at least evidence of the beginning of the end of the Democrats’ stranglehold over power.

But that was then and this is now. As everyone, with the possible exception of Barack Obama knows, there is a big difference between campaigning and governing.  Brown won.  He should now drop his reference to the seat as belonging to the people that served him so well in the final days of the campaign and refer to it as “Ted Kennedy’s seat”. Kennedy, who was the liberal lion of the Senate, remains as a symbol of the left wing of the Democratic Party even more so than the President Obama does. Kennedy was championing socialized medicine when the president was still in diapers. While Brown will be just one of 100 members of the United States and his vote will count no more or no less than any other senator’s, the fact that the person occupying the seat held so long by Kennedy will vote against the healthcare bill will be rife with symbolism. The point that the Democrats and Gergen were making about the voting of the person who occupies the seat held by Ted Kennedy can now be turned around to the advantage of the Republicans and those who oppose not only the healthcare legislation but the policies of Obama and the Democrats.

When Scott Brown votes against healthcare and other liberal legislation, he should never stop reminding people that he is doing so while occupying the seat held so long by the late Kennedy. As they say, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Copyright © Canada Free Press
Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Men’s News Daily, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck.

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