"Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don't Mirandize terrorists. Don't raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.

"These deals -- the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback -- had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff -- in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a ('Cadillac') health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized."

"For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process. With today's monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day. By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers. Our democracy depends upon free speech, not just for some but for all."

"[F]or the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years -- either from the White House or Capitol Hill -- thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn't like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn't like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters' first possible opportunity."

"You want to see my truck?"

"Whether or not Republican Scott Brown captures the Senate seat in Massachusetts today, his surging and successful campaign is a fire bell in the night for the Party of Government."

"After all the speeches, politicking, and attack ads, there are just two issues that will determine the winner of the Massachusetts Senate seat in Tuesday's special election. The first is health care and the second is one-party government.  And in Massachusetts, neither issue works exactly as outsiders might think -- and right now both are working in favor of Republican Scott Brown."

"At first, health care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity.  But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it.  After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.  

"The health care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent.  But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda.  In a country where politics is fought between 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30.  And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield."      

"As the educated class bitterly clings to its contempt for the increasing numbers not enlightened enough to share its views, other Americans have noticed, even in the liberal heartland of Massachusetts, where Republican Scott Brown seems on the brink of an upset victory in the special Senate election next Tuesday. That would have reverberations for the educated class an awful lot like that tea party back in 1773."

"Democrat Martha Coakley is the voice of the 'little people' the way Ted Kennedy was the voice of sobriety. If Massachusetts voters want another privileged liberal who talks a good 'social justice' game while ignoring public corruption, pocketing gobs of money from Beltway fat cats and pandering to corporate special interests, Coakley's the one."

"The latest 'screw-up' that let a man with explosives get on a plane on Christmas day is only part of a larger laxness and irresponsibility when it comes to national security. This administration pays lip service to national security and gives out with a lot of rhetorical notions that makes it notional security instead of national security."