There's a need to restore balance to the debate in Washington and bring a contrarian voice to the all-Democratic Massachusetts delegation. Voters can achieve that by electing Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate Tuesday.
Brown, however, would be much more than a "no" vote in the Senate.
A former selectman, state representative and now state senator from Wrentham with a 30-year record of military service, Brown has a keen understanding of the unique challenges facing Massachusetts. His time spent as a Bay State Republican has taught him how to work across the aisle to get things done (a trait for which the late Ted Kennedy was justly praised). That experience would help him become an effective voice for moderation and bipartisanship within the halls of the Capitol.
Brown is the kind of Republican — fiscally conservative, but middle-of-the-road on social issues in the Ed Brooke/Bill Weld mold — that Massachusetts voters have endorsed in the past with good results.
A vote for Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic nominee, is simply a vote for more of the same. While she seeks to link Brown to the GOP's radical right wing, it is Coakley who has sacrificed her independence in order to attract support from the unions, the family of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, EMILY'S List, and other more liberal elements of the Democratic Party.
Those ties mean Coakley would likely become simply another Bay State politician marching in lockstep with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The stakes are high, as the optimism that marked the first months of the Obama administration has devolved into a gnawing unease over the country's future prospects.
Despite hundreds of billions spent on economic "stimulus," the unemployment rate remains in double digits, and some economists are expressing fears of a double-dip recession. Despite the billions spent and thousands of lives sacrificed to keep terrorists at bay, a known Muslim fanatic very nearly succeeded in blowing up a Detroit-bound airliner Christmas Day with a bomb sewn in his underwear.
Meanwhile, discarding his Inauguration Day pledge to seek consensus on major issues, Obama, whom this paper endorsed, is pressing the Democratic majority in Congress to pass a health bill — any bill, apparently — despite still-unanswered questions about its likely cost and effectiveness.
In contrast to those Democrats who fervently believe that government should be in charge of everything, Brown has faith in the ability of private enterprise to get the economy back on the right track.
Unlike Coakley, he believes terrorists who have declared war on the United States, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, should be treated as enemy combatants rather than criminals entitled to expensive "show trials."
Brown says he's running to give people a choice. And if elected, he would be on the ballot again in 2012 when Kennedy's six-year term was due to expire.
In this special election, residents of Massachusetts can send a clear message that the scatterbrained, deficit-fueled approach to problem-solving seen in Washington to date is not the kind of change people voted for in 2008.
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