Charlie Cook is fond of the maxim that everything there is to say has been said, but not everyone has said it. And thus, it’s our turn to weigh in Republican Scott Brown’s stunning win in the Massachusetts special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.
The conventional wisdom in the special election, which we shared, was that Democrats would host a competitive primary on December 8 of last year and the party’s nominee would cruise to victory in the January 19 general election. It wasn’t far-fetched. Bay State voters hadn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since Ed Brooke won re-election to a second term in 1972. Democrats control all 10 congressional seats, all statewide constitutional offices, including the governorship, and have overwhelming majorities in the state legislature. President Obama took 62 percent of the vote in 2008, and according to Gallup, Massachusetts was the most Democratic state in the nation that year based on party self-identification. Further, Republicans weren’t able to recruit either a well-known candidate or one who could self-fund a race. It wasn’t hard to
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