Scott Brown's Victory Is A Message For The GOP Not Obama

There's something rather pathetic about the high-speed reaction to every major event that occurs in today's news. Perhaps the 24-hour cable coverage and the Internet have something to do with the hysterical reaction to Republican Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts. Liberals are crying and conservatives are crowing, but the real import of his triumphant win seems to have gone over the Republicans' heads.

Already some are speculating that Mr. Brown's victory means that the GOP should run moderate candidates. That might be credible in staunchly blue states such as Massachusetts, California, and New York but the reason he won had nothing to do with his pro-choice stance or the fact that he drove around in a pickup truck. He won because he recognized that the government is totally out of control and so did the rest of his fellow Bay Staters. They know that there's no health-care crisis and that global warming is a hoax, that unemployment is too high and that the economy is in crisis and that these issues need to be debated in public, not behind closed doors.

The congressional Democrats and the White House just don't get it and apparently neither does Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) who's frequently the lone Republican voting with the opposition. She has no idea how the first Republicans bravely honored their core principles above self-interest.

I have to wonder if the leaders of the Republican Party have ever studied the history of the Grand Old Party, which began as a radical party taking a moral and principled stand against the evil of slavery. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, needs to make Michael Zak's "Back to Basics for the Republican Party" mandatory reading for all party officials. Mr. Zak sent me an e-mail with the subject

"Scott Brown Won the Charles Sumner Seat in the U.S. Senate." How many Republicans recognize Charles Sumner's name? I know I didn't, but after reading about him, I'll never forget it. Mr. Zak wrote:

"Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) was one of the founders of the Republican Party. Angered by Sumner's denunciations of slavery, a Democrat congressman beat him nearly to death on the floor of the U.S. Senate." (May 22, 1856) Sumner responded with a classic denunciation of the Democratic Party for promoting The Barbarism of Slavery.

The Democrat attacker was Preston Brooks of South Carolina and like many Democrats at the time was vehemently opposed to ending slavery. During this same period of time we must not ever forget that it was Democrats in the South who established Jim Crow laws and founded the country's primary terrorist organization--the Ku Klux Klan."

Almost immediately after Scott Brown's election to the Senate, he was asked if he would consider running for president. I wish he'd said, "That's a stupid question," but he didn't because he's a Republican and still trusts the mainstream media.

All last week, the Breitbart "Big" sites (Hollywood, Government, and Journalism) ran essays on "Rethinking Bush," emphasizing the hostile media coverage of his two terms. My submission wondered why President Bush didn't fight back against the mainstream media, and I posited the possibility that he and his father were just too patrician to fight against the hordes of venomous journalists, and I use that word lightly.

Americans seem to have forgotten that George W. Bush was a reluctant candidate from the beginning. He knew from his father's experience how loathsome the press could be and he didn't want his family to endure the same treatment, yet he swallowed the poison pill for his party and it betrayed him.

Had the Republicans in Congress been as principled as Charles Sumner, they would have united to enforce the Bush policies that could have prevented the 2008 meltdown. In 2003, Mr. Bush introduced his budget reform proposal and warned against the expansion of loans given by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both parties are accusing the other of failing to get it passed at the time, but the Republican-controlled Congress didn't have the will to support an increasingly unpopular president. Most of the Republicans were too busy reaching across the aisle and stabbing the president in the back. Some pundits call them RINO's (Republicans In Name Only). I call them despicable.

In case no one's noticed, Democrats tend to stick together and vote as one body, otherwise Bill Clinton would have been tossed out of office after his impeachment.

During the Bush administrations, the Republican rule of thumb was "Every man and woman for themselves." Their main criteria was staying in office or getting pork for their districts.

Many conservatives have complained against Mr. Bush's cave-in to liberal legislation without recognizing that many concessions may have been made to support his requests for funding the war on terror. Wheeling-and-dealing is the name of the game in Congress and Mr. Bush had no backup for his conservative policies, only when he conceded to liberal legislation.

In November, many of the power brokers in Congress will be up for reelection, and I hope that this means that politicians hear what the voters are saying. There's a YouTube video being circulated that's addressed to the Democrat Party called "America Rising -- An Open Letter to Democrat Pols." (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=uZs8k4pJcyk)

The message, however, is just as applicable to those Republicans who took the taxpayers' stimulus money for pet pork projects that didn't create jobs but were paybacks for campaign donors.

The video shouts in large words on each screen: "In 2010, you -- will -- lose -- big. No more taxes; no more spending; no more socialism; we tried to warn you -- but you would not listen."

Then follows a montage of shots taken at tea parties and other protests against health-care reform. These were the gatherings of ordinary citizens who were subsequently mocked by reporters and anchors on CNN and MSNBC. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called them "Astroturf" rather than grassroots movements and accused the tea parties of being funded by wealthy conservatives who didn't want high taxes. She went further and said, "They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."

I recently had lunch with an official of the local Republican Party who asked me what I thought of the tea parties. I sensed that there's an internal distrust of the movement within the GOP and that's probably because the groups have refused to align themselves with any party. I told her that if I were physically fit, I'd be at every local tea party possible. I became an activist as well by launching my Website ChangeNYin2010.com to inform voters how they can take back the state from corrupt politicians. Albany is corrupt to the bone and what spurred me to get more involved is the same frustration that's driving the grassroots movement.

Mr. Steele has said that if he were not chairman of the RNC, he'd be joining the tea party rallies, and that he's helped them arrange rallies in the D.C. area.

I hope he means it because the silent majority finally has a voice and it's shouting loudly, "Can you hear me now?"

Alicia Colon lives in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com