The Death Knell of Obamacare

By Ryan Kosyla

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Last week, Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in a Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat following his death. It is a resounding and much needed victory for the Republican Party. But, only a few weeks ago, it didn’t look this way at all.

Massachusetts seemed to be a sure bet for Democrats when campaigning started. Obama won it in the 2008 election easily and MA has voted liberal for a very long time. Kennedy spent 46 years representing them in the same seat for God’s sake.

But Scott Brown, an independent Republican, drew on support of the masses and attracted moderate voters. He campaigned all over Massachusetts in a pickup truck and his image of an everyman never seemed to wane. Coakley, on the other hand, went on a smear campaign against Brown in true elitist fashion. She became too greedy, too sure of herself, too pushy. The voters pushed back, and the people have spoken.

I don’t know whether this was a vote on President Obama’s healthcare plan or his agenda in general. What I do know is that the election of Scott Brown is far more important than most people think.

Brown is the forty-first Republican who will sit in the Senate. This means Democrats no longer have sixty votes, or what is called a supermajority. Often in the Senate, the minority will filibuster a majority-sponsored bill they disagree with; it is a classic tactic to cause a bill to fail and impede the progress of whoever has the most seats in Congress.

With sixty members of a party, however, the supermajority can opt for a motion called cloture, which brings the debate to an end and, essentially, shuts up the minority party. It is a defense against a filibuster. Up until the death of Ted Kennedy, the Democrats had a supermajority