Someone want to explain to me just where in this poll it says that the voters of Massachusetts wanted Brown to work with Democrats "to get Republican ideas into legislation". Papermoon at Daily KOS has a nice breakdown of that poll which flies in the face of Schieffer's hackery here--New Poll Explains Massachusetts.
Of course Schieffer can't help himself and has to get his little shot in on the blogs as well, saying politicians shouldn't be listening to the "fringes". Well Bob, it looks like "the fringe" at the Great Orange Satan is doing a better job of breaking down that poll than you are. And given the Democrats accepted 180 amendments from the Republicans on the health care bill and didn't get a single vote for them, just what else does Schieffer think they should do to show they'll work with the other side? Just another example of someone pretending to be a journalist while pushing Republican talking points.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally today, figuring out what Scott Brown's victory meant has set off a fiercer debate than trying to divine the meaning of the Book of Job. We were all certain it meant something profound, we just weren't sure what. Well, a Washington Post poll yesterday provided some clues. Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts voters thought the country had gone off course and the big part of them voted for Brown. That's pretty simple actually.
But here's the interesting part: Three-fourths of those voters--Massachusetts voters, mind you-- said they wanted Brown to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation. Let me say that again: Three-fourths of his voters said they wanted him to work with the other side.
My own take is the vote for Brown was not so much a vote for or against policy or party, as it was a vote against the process itself. People don't like the political games, and they've lost confidence in a bumbling bureaucracy that since Katrina can't seem to get out of its own way. Why trust the government with a complicated health care proposal, when it can't catch a terrorist whose own father tried to turn him in. It will take the perseverance of Job and a lot of political courage, but if the two sides could somehow pay less attention to the voices on the fringes of the left and the right, take the Massachusetts voters' advice, sit down together and see what they can agree on, who knows? They might get something done. They couldn't do worse. They might even like it, and I don't need a poll to tell me the rest of us surely would.
