Political Commentary

In November 2008, George W. Bush was at 27 percent; 80 percent thought the country was headed in the wrong direction; 92 percent thought the economy was poor or worse. As James Carville said, if the party can't win with these numbers, it ought to go into a new line of work.

The one attribute Americans wanted most in its next president was that he be for "change." And Obama had cornered the market on change, while John McCain had voted 90 percent with Bush.

But instead of seeing the election as a repudiation of the Bush Republicans, Obama, Pelosi and Reid read it as an embrace of their wonderful selves and a national cry for more government.

Following Rahm's Rule—never let a crisis go to waste!—Obama and his party took the collapse of the banks and spreading economic chaos to attempt the greatest leap forward in federal power since World War II.

Most Americans understood candidate Obama's health care plans to mean that folks who could not afford care would be able to get it, whatever their conditions. As the plan evolved, however, it grew in the eyes of the public into precisely what the Tea Party and town-hall protesters said it was: a federal takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Bureaucrats would decide who gets what care, when and for how long. And a panoply of new taxes, fees and regulations would be imposed, producing a revenue windfall for the federal government and a quantum leap in power for federal bureaucrats.

What Massachusetts is telling the nation is what the Tea Party people was about; America doesn't want what Washington is pushing and either put it down or we remember in November.

( As they said during the Bush -Clinton campaign, "Its the economy, STUPID")