Markey Win is Interesting

Well the results are in and guess what? Ed Markey is our next senator. So much for the new kind of Republican.

But the results are interesting to look at. Looking at a town by town map provided by WBUR, there are a lot of red towns out there, in fact a quick visual count shows more red towns than blue towns. what does this mean?

From BostonGlobe.com

First, the obvious thing is Markey won because of the cities. When you look at the map you'll see Boston, Worcester and that city our west all voted for Markey. The Democratic Machine was at work there for sure.  And unfortunately winning those three cities was enough.

Second, there was a record low turnout, 27% which may have made a difference, although I don't think so. There will be all kinds of excuses as to why it was so low, the weather, the Bruins, vacations, etc. etc. but the truth is people were just not excited about the choice. Die hard republicans weren't excited by Gomez who they feel is just another Democrat. They are tired of having candidates who they feel aren't true conservatives. I know, I know, this is Massachusetts and we can't expect a real conservative to win, but does that mean we should settle for less?

Third, I will say the numbers in towns like Southbridge and Webster, towns I would have expected Markey to win overwhelmingly, but instead where he got trounced, prove that Gomez was more of a Democrat than a Republican. He obviously appealed to the democrats in those towns for some reason.

What does this all mean? One thing is we'll see more Gomez type candidates running in this state in the future. The republican powers that be will use this as proof that running someone who is more like a democrat than a republican shows that the republicans could break that "glass ceiling". Of course this won't do us any good since they will vote with the Democrats and we gain nothing. I guess this is the new Republican party. Sigh.

So now we have Ed Markey, who will do nothing new, who will do whatever the party tells him, who will not change anything, certainly not for the better, and who will go back home to Maryland to never be seen in Massachusetts again, well at least not until the next election.