Something is stirring in Massachusetts. It is something old, and I believe something very good.
Scott Brown is a popular fellow. So popular that if he stuck a feather in his cap, we’d call it macaroni.
It’s not Scott Brown, per se. He’s a state senator of modest achievement, a good looking fellow to be sure, with a good looking daughter who can sing the hell out of a show tune. He is, as most Republican legislators in Massachusetts are, a nice guy who is more concerned with taking care of his constituents that he is in getting to a national stage. Massachusetts Republican state senators — and there are only five of them, so rare that if they were a species in Middle Earth they’d be the Istari — are a humble group — more Radagast (the Brown!) than Saruman, if you take my meaning.
Scott Brown, everyman, is on everyone’s lips, because he is a fairly ordinary man who has been placed at an extraordinary juncture in time and space. The people of Massachusetts are waking up, and to paraphrase the most famous of the Istari, are finding that they are strong.
My wife occasionally dines with a little old lady, an old Massachusetts Yankee. The little old lady expressed to my wife the other day that she is quite fond of Scott Brown. She also rather likes the lady from Alaska, Mrs. Palin, and doesn’t know why others do not. She also thinks Glenn Beck makes more sense than most people on the radio or TV.
My wife and I were leaving church this afternoon, and a different little old lady expressed to us that she hoped we were voting this Tuesday — this, after the pastor in mass reminded us that next Friday is, at the bishop’s direction, a day of fasting and penitence to help remove the scourge of abortion from the land (God help us, I think the church is beginning to awake). We knew exactly what the little old lady at mass was saying to us. She did not have to mention any names. Conspiracies against the crown are best done with a minimum of words. I told the little old lady at mass that I would be out of town on Tuesday, but that I had already voted absentee. I didn’t even need to wink.
“Bless your heart,” she said.
Massachusetts has a reputation as a liberal state. It is. But while our people might be liberals, they have never been fond of royalty. And while John F. Kennedy might have been seen as Richard Coeur de Lion, nobody ever saw Teddy as much more than John Lackland. Mitt Romney was elected Governor here as much by way of apology for his defeat in a Senate race against old Ted as anything else.
If we dislike royalty, we dislike pretenders even more. Martha Coakley is a pretender. No one liked that she assumed the job was hers, that she stopped campaigning. And believe me, we noticed that in an ad attacking Everyman Scott Brown, she misspelled the Commonwealth’s name. We noticed that she didn’t know who Curt Schilling was. We didn’t forget her role in keeping Gerald Amirault in jail. We didn’t forget her harrassment of the little old ladies in the garden clubs. We didn’t forget a certain politically connected police officer who almost got away with child rape. We didn’t forget that while Scott Brown was shaking hands, his voice going hoarse from talking to us, Martha was in Washington, D.C. taking money from lobbyists while a campaign advisor was shoving a man to the ground who had the temerity to ask her a question about terrorism.
Make no mistake: Massachusetts is a liberal state. But we don’t like phonies, and we already have one of those in the Senate, the ersatz JFK who married his money and who prefers Swiss cheese on his steak sandwich. We’re not about to elect another of those.
It is not beyond a doubt yet — the Democratic machine in the Bay State is a formidable thing, and enough cities, and, dare I say, graveyards, are so far in the Democratic bag — or, if you prefer, the sinking trunk of the Oldsmobile Delmont — that we might wake up on Wednesday with a new Senator of the same sex as Hillary Clinton but not nearly the charm.
But when the little old ladies in this state have turned on you, you have a problem. I suspect that on Wednesday in Massachusetts, we’ll be smiling at each other — and pointing out to our friends that in their haste, they left a little of the Indian warpaint on their faces from the night before.
Something old in Massachusetts stirs. In the nighttime air, I can almost hear the sound of fifes.
