Brown WON!!!

moar funny pictures

Massachusetts member of Congress Barney Frank had a much classier reaction to Scott Brown’s victory than I expected, which is quoted at the American Spectator blog by Philip Klein:

Rep. Barney Frank is not a wobbly moderate in a marginal district, but a liberal Democrat who has been supportive of the health care push. And that’s why this statement below, which essentially rules out all of the options being discussed for pushing through Obamacare, deals a potentially fatal blow to the legislation.

Read the rest, including Frank’s statement, here.

H/T: Michelle Malkin, who cautions:

January 19 was an amazing day for grass-roots conservatism. But the Beltway GOP should be warned against unjustified triumphalism. They were late to the game. Activists still haven’t, and won’t, forget the massive amounts of money Washington, D.C. Republicans wasted on Dede Scozzafava. And Scott Brown quite noticeably didn’t mention the word “Republican” once during his prepared remarks.

The GOP brand is still damaged. And instant exploitation of the Brown win — see the NRSC website here — isn’t going to help matters. As I’ve said for many years, the Republican Party needs to clean its own house before it demands that the Democrats clean theirs.

Personally, I expect that Obama/Pelosi/Reid will NOT give up on healthcare reform because the proposed legislation is not about healthcare, it is about nationalizing the healthcare industry and establishing economy-killing taxes and socialistic government intrusion into individual life. Obama does not care if he wins clean or dirty. He just plays to win. This is going to get a LOT uglier before it gets better.

Update, 1/20/2010, Wed.:

Barney Frank today walks back “our respect for democratic procedures [that] must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened”:

That statement created a bit of confusion: Did Frank think the election was a referendum on health care and that Democrats should abandon the plan? Or did he simply think it would be inappropriate of Democrats to ram a compromise bill through the Senate in the window between Brown’s victory and his swearing in. Tonight, Frank laid any doubt to rest.

“I should not have put out a statement late in the evening last night when I was upset because I didn’t really–I think I overstated the pessimism,” Frank told me. “I really was worried–I put out a new statement–I was worried about some Democrats doing crazy things, like ‘don’t seat him’, ‘let Kirk’s vote go.’ I was worried about that.”

Frank laid out a specific, potential way forward for health care, which he acknowledged would be fraught with difficulty. But, he noted, if it fails, Democrats should return to the Senate and ask one moderate Republican [Sen. Olympia Snowe, of Maine] if she really wants to be the person who says, “no way, no how,” to health care reform.

“The one thing is — you might be able to get the Senate bill through the House if there were assurances and agreement on what subsequent amendments would be,” Frank said. “That’s going to be very tricky, but that’s one possibility.”

Frank is talking, roughly, about Plan B, which Democrats have been discussing since the electoral situation in Massachusetts began looking dire. How exactly would that work? Frank explained:

“You have to pass the Senate bill as is and the President signs it. Then people have to be assured that you can get the amendments through the House and the Senate,” Frank said. “Because then the argument would be, ‘Look, the bills already passed so now the question is whether you’re willing to amend it or not.'”