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Kennedy asks his seat be filled quickly after he dies
By adamg on Thu, 08/20/2009 - 10:25am
The Globe reports on a letter from Ted Kennedy to Deval Patrick, House Speaker Bob DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray, asking they work to change state law to let Patrick appoint somebody quickly to his seat after he dies, to let Massachusetts have a full voice in the current health-care debate.
The legislature changed the way a Senate vacancy is filled in 2004, to prevent Mitt Romney from appointing a senator in the event John Kerry was elected president.
Jay Fitzgerald finds Kennedy's request profoundly sad:
... To know of anyone slowly dying of cancer is profoundly sad. It's so difficult for everyone concerned to say good-bye. The Kennedy family is handling this with a lot of dignity. ...
BN Cordeiro finds Kennedy's request appalling:
... I wish Senator Kennedy a long & healthy life after a victorious battle with cancer. I also am appalled, but not surprised, by the political games being employed by the Democrats in order to hold onto a dynastic seat. Be it by family or by political party it appears that the fix is in to hold fast to a seat about which they feel entitled. This is not about Senatorial representation for Massachusetts but rather Democratic control of the US Senate. This is about ensuring the next US Senator is acceptable to the liberal Democrat ruling elite. ...
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Comments
hmm
So it's OK to change the law to keep a republican from appointing a new senator and then change it back so that a democrat can do just that?
LOVE.
THIS.
GOVERNMENT.
Let's not care about the what's right, let's just keep changing the laws to suit our own selfish needs the people be damned!
On the surface, it may
On the surface, it may appear that way. But dig deeper. The proposal is that the appointee would be prohibited from running in the special election. So that means no incumbent benefiting from Deval's appointment. I take this more as a desire not to leave the state under represented. I'm guessing Kennedy wants to resign, but won't do it if it means we only get one Senator until November.
All the way until November?
All the way until November? A whole three months? So we are to believe that back when the state had a Republican governor, the United States Senate wasn't doing anything particularly important? I don't recall any such letters being written back then - do you?
But the anti-Romney law was
But the anti-Romney law was a clear cut case of cynical political maneuvering. Maybe this can fix a past wrong (until we have another Republican gov).
On the surface, it may
Not deep enough. An "explicit personal commitment" is not a prohibition; take for example the circumstances that gave us Sen. Roland Burris.
yeah, to the untrained eye,
one might think we're getting screwed here. "Explicit personal commitments" were made obsolete by Marty Meehan. At least in other banana republics, they have decent weather in between the hurricanes.
LOL
Comments on the linked blog indicate that they think this is a ploy to keep the seat in Democratic hands and fark the Massachusetts Republican party.
It is left to the reader to determine why this is funny.
Yes please
The fact that the legislature screwed up by not providing for interim appointment of a senator until an election can be held is not a reason not to fix it now. They should get this done now.
Kennedy seat and political games
In 2004 the republican senate offered an amendment to the law change that they are now opposing today. Why are they pointing the hypocritical finger at their Democratic colleagues when they themselves are hypocritical in the same aspect. "They were for before they were against it."