The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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January 31, 2010

Your View: Columnist didn’t mention a key fact about Mass.

John Humphrey, Mankato The Free Press

MANKATO — I’m glad I am not a political pundit with an agenda, for I would never know what to say until I saw the polls.

Take Charles Krauthammer. When polls or elections reveal the unpopularity of Democratic views and candidates, he praises the diligence and intelligence of the electorate and says it’s proof that Democratic ideas are wrong or need to be revised. But when polls show Republican views and candidates are unpopular, he won’t hesitate to claim that the Republicans haven’t stated their position clearly enough, or that the liberal media has somehow successfully duped “we the people.”

His latest salvo finds him bashing Democrats for failing to appreciate that the real message of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts is that we the people not only do not want Obamacare but that we the people are right to not want it, and right to not want the Obama agenda generally. However, Krauthammer fails to mention that Massachusetts enacted its own health care reform law in 2006, a law that penalizes those without health insurance and that includes free health care for low-income residents. What then is the “meaning” of Brown’s victory? Perhaps it is simply that people won’t vote for something that they already have.

One final bit of advice for Krauthammer and anyone else in his line of work: The unpopularity of a position or policy is not always a reliable mark of its failings, especially if “we the people” use unenlightened self-interest as our measure.

 

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