In the Right

Yes, the voting's still in progress.

But from here it looks as though Republican Scott Brown's on his way to a smashing victory in today's Massachusetts Senate special election -- and it's not, as many would have you believe, simply the result of a poorly run campaign by his opponent.

Nor is it merely the latest manifestation of the smoldering anti-Washington resentment that's already shown itself in Virginia and New Jersey.

It's not even attributable primarily to a rejection of the national Democratic Party leadership's shenanigans as it attempts to reform the nation's health care system.

Now that the Democrats have kicked away the 60th seat in their Senate majority by making the decision to send Barack Obama to Massachusetts on Sunday to campaign for Attorney General Martha Coakley's flailing campaign, what's next?

It looks to me as though Obama's Sunday visit will be the final blow to Coakley's campaign -- the straw that broke the camel's back.

On the two key metrics used to judge a campaign -- manpower and message -- the visit will cost more than it will gain. And in a race that every pollster worth his salt, and every handicapper worth his, now agrees is going right down to the wire, the net loss to the Coakley campaign will be enough to sink it.

Buried in the coverage of last night's Suffolk University/7 News poll -- the one that shows Massachusetts Republican Brown leading Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by 50-46 percent in the contest for the Senate -- are the following two data points:

• Sixty-two percent of those surveyed believe Massachusetts cannot afford its current health care system.

• Fifty-four percent of those surveyed support Massachusett's near-universal health care law, which relies on an individual mandate.

Using the meager mathematical skills I learned in Mrs. DeRegt's third grade class, I conclude that at least16 percent of those surveyed -- that's roughly one out of every six -- support Massachusetts's health care law, even though they don't believe Massachusetts can afford it.

Is it any wonder Massachusetts is as blue as it is?

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So last night, I was reading "Game Change," the delicious new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and on page 129 I ran across this passage:

"The Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan was the preeminent clubhouse outside Washington for Democratic politicians and those who loved -- and funded -- them. Its restaurant, 540 Park, served the city's most storied power breakfast, and its bar, The Library, was a prime site of lubrication and transaction between supplicants and benefactors. The Regency was [John] Edwards's hotel of choice when he was staying in New York."

I thought: "The Regency, The Regency ... Where have I read about that hotel recently?"

It took me a few moments, but then I realized where I'd read about The Regency -- it was prominently featured in Tuesday's New York Times interview with Harold Ford, previewing a potential Ford candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Asked whether he had become a fan of either the Giants or the Jets, Ford had responded, "I had breakfast about every morning when I am in town, or I should say, several mornings, at the Regency. I see my friends the Tisches. Steve Tisch is my close personal friend ..."

So The Regency isn't just the place where John Edwards first met Rielle Hunter, it's the place where Harold Ford breakfasts with Giants co-owner/"Risky Business" producer Steve Tisch. Sounds like the Heilemann/Halperin description of it as the "preeminent clubhouse outside Washington for Democratic politicians and those who loved -- and funded -- them" might actually be understated.

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Tuesday's New York Times ran a fascinating interview of former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, conducted by Timesman Michael Barbaro.

I say "fascinating" as in "Oh, my God, I cannot believe Ford actually said these things to a reporter for The New York Times in the belief, or even hope, that they would help him win Democratic primary votes against an appointed senator."

Right out of the gate, Ford was asked the obvious question: What in the world makes you think you're qualified to represent Noo Yawk in the United States Senate?

The first line of Ford's answer, unedited: "I ran for office 14 years ago in Tennessee, for Congress."

(Umm, yes, sir, that's precisely why the reporter is asking you what in the world makes you think you make sense as a Senator representing New York?)

Well, now he's done it.

"He" is Chris Christie, New Jersey's Governor-elect, winner of a slugfest of a campaign last year against Democrat incumbent Jon Corzine.

"He's done it" refers to his decision, announced at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, to appoint former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler as his Commissioner of Education.

Even as Republicans and conservatives approach giddiness and near euphoria over the state of the special election campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, the results of a special election in northern Virginia yesterday should remind them not to take anything for granted.

In a major upset, Democratic Delegate Dave Marsden outspent his opponent by almost 2-1 and squeaked by GOP nominee Steve Hunt to capture the last remaining GOP seat in northern Virginia. Winning by just 317 votes (out of 23,569 cast), Marsden took the seat by 50.62 - 49.28 percent.

Democrats now control the Virginia state Senate by 22-18.

In Illinois, now home of the nation's earliest primary elections for federal offices, early voting has begun.

That's right: In the summer of 2007, the Illinois legislature -- controlled by Democrats -- changed the date of Illinois's primary elections, moving them from their traditional third-Tuesday-in-March slot to a much earlier, first-Tuesday-in-February slot, so Illinois primary voters could vote on the same day as almost two dozen other states that had moved up their 2008 presidential primary dates.

The change was made explicitly for the purpose of benefiting home-state Sen. Barack Obama's chances of capturing the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Sometimes, you've screwed things up so badly that there's no longer anything you can do to win the conversation, and your only hope for salvation lies in a change in the conversation.

That axiom of public relations has been on display since Saturday, as Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele -- whose ship was taking on water last week from a number of self-inflicted below-the-waterline holes -- thanked his lucky stars for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's own display of foot-in-mouth disease.

Instead of spending the entire duration of his appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows in a crouch, defending himself and his tenure, Steele was allowed to pivot to the moral high ground and go on the attack against Reid.

The whole episode brings to mind one of the few classic political jokes, born of the muck of the 1988 presidential campaign -- a campaign that had been upended by Gary Hart's philandering, Joe Biden's plagiarism, and Mike Dukakis strategist John Sasso's anonymous attack video exposing Biden's plagiarism.

The joke starts out with Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Joe Biden, and Mike Dukakis -- and their wives and children -- in a boat that springs a massive leak.

"Let's get the women and children to the lifeboat!" cried Carter.

"Screw the women and children!" responded Nixon.

"Do you think we have time?" asked Hart.

"Do you think we have time?" repeated Biden.

"Did everybody hear what Joe Biden just said?" asked Dukakis.

Just for the record, according to the Rule 5(a)(1) of the Republican Party, "The chairman or co-chairman may be removed from office only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the entire Republican National Committee."

There are 168 members of the Republican National Committee -- a state party chairman, a national committeeman and a national committeewoman from each of the 50 states, and the same three officials from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. (Yes -- odd as it may seem, an RNC member from Guam has the same voting rights and the same influence as an RNC member from Maryland, even though Guam has neither a representative in the House, nor a senator in the Senate, nor an electoral vote in the Electoral College. Go figure.)

With 168 members, a two-thirds vote requires 112 votes to pass.

Michael Steele won the RNC chairmanship by a vote of 91-77 on the last ballot against Katon Dawson, the former South Carolina Republican Party Chairman who was his last rival standing.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in the headlines again, this time for taking time out from his supposed-to-be-full-time gig as RNC chairman to go on a book tour promoting sales of his new manifesto, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda."

Already under fire for taking time away from his full-time gig to give paid speeches at up to $20,000 per speech, Steele now finds himself in trouble for publishing a GOP manifesto without letting other GOP leaders know in advance, and for lining his pockets with earnings from book sales for a book he wrote sometime in the last year -- when he was supposedly working full-time as the RNC chairman.

Said one GOP congressional staffer to the Washington Post, Steele should be promoting the book as "Citizen Michael Steele selling Citizen Steele's book, not RNC Chairman Steele selling Citizen Steele's book."

On this matter, at least, his critics are jumping the gun. They're assuming that his interest in selling books is wholly commercial.

ABC News The Note just revealed that Michael Steele has canceled a scheduled appearance on "Top Line." The interview was scheduled for noon today, live at ABCNews.com.

According to Rick Klein's Twitter feed, at 11:15 a.m. the noon interview was confirmed; 15 minutes later, the RNC canceled, claiming that Steele was called into an "emergency meeting."

On another front, the Washington Post reports that Republican congressional leaders say they did not know Steele was publishing a book until it was released this week, and they had no input in drafting what Steele is promoting as the blueprint Republicans should follow to win back power.

The release of Steele's book, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," surprised Republican congressional leaders, some of whom first learned of the book by watching Steele's television appearances this week, three top GOP congressional aides said Friday. The staffers would only describe their bosses' communications with the Republican National Committee chairman on condition of anonymity.

If I were a Birther, or a Bircher, or Mel Gibson playing Jerry Fletcher in "Conspiracy Theory", I'd be convinced that Andy Martin's campaign is being secretly funded by allies of GOP rival Mark Steven Kirk.

Kirk, of course, is the liberal Republican congressman who represents Illinois' 10th Congressional District -- Chicago's North Shore suburbs (which you've seen in the background if you ever watched "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" or "Risky Business" or the CBS summer replacement series "Swingtown") -- and is now running for the GOP nomination for the Senate seat once held by Barack Obama.

Martin, for those readers outside the listening range of Chicago radio stations WLS, WGN, and WBBM, would be described properly as a "gadfly," except that I actually know and like some gadflies, and I wouldn't want to insult them.

He is a perpetual candidate for office whose Wikipedia entry is so wildly amusing that three weeks ago, he filed a lawsuit against -- wait for it -- Wikipedia itself, claiming that it is "a tax-exempt protosocialist scam that seeks to harass Republicans, conservatives and Obama opponents."

The Marco Rubio vs. Charlie Crist smackdown in Florida has claimed its latest victim: Jim Greer, current Florida GOP state chairman and a close ally of Gov. Crist, announced his resignation on Tuesday, effective Feb. 20.

And with that move, a primary contest in Florida could impact the selection of the next president of the United States.

For weeks, Greer had been under fire from conservative activists and grass-roots GOP leaders. The charges: mismanagement of the party's finances, and an unfair tilt of the state party apparatus toward Crist in his Senate primary contest against Rubio.

The final straw for Greer -- who even up until just a few weeks ago had insisted that he would remain in his position, counting on strong backing from Crist -- was a letter delivered last week, signed by a dozen prominent GOP donors and bundlers, declaring that they would have difficulty raising money until Greer was gone.

With the Senate passage of the health care overhaul bill on Christmas Eve and then the attempted bombing of a passenger airplane on Christmas Day, there's certainly been an awful lot to keep even the most eagle-eyed news consumer busy and/or distracted these last two weeks.

But that's no excuse for missing this fascinating Dec. 30 lead editorial in The New York Times, which calls for the removal of -- seriously -- every single member of the New York legislature, and goes on to call for fundamental reform of New York's redistricting process:

"New Yorkers should be appalled at their failed state government, particularly their corrupt and clueless Legislature. Scandal and irresponsibility have been Albany's creed for decades. This year, the gang added another outrage to the list: complete fiscal incompetence.

"The only solace is this: The entire Legislature is up for re-election in 2010. And unless there is a sudden turnaround -- and, so far, we see few signs of it -- New Yorkers have no choice but to vote out all the lawmakers and start over."