The Man Who Can Stop Obamacare

Subject: txt 1st hcare action -
The Democrats have gotten to the precipice — to borrow President Obama’s word — of victory on health-care reform for one reason above all others: 60 votes.

Their supermajority in the Senate empowered them to muscle through a sprawling mess of a bill by partisan fiat. If the ball had bounced the other way in a close race or two (or if Arlen Specter had felt more loyalty to his party of decades), the Democrats wouldn’t have gotten to 60. Once there, they were willing to resort to any expedient to stay at the magic number. After Ted Kennedy’s death last summer, the Massachusetts legislature rushed to change state election law to allow for an interim replacement in advance of a special election, explicitly to keep the Democrats at 60.

Now, the special election for the seat is less than two weeks away. It represents the only electoral threat to 60 that Democrats will face until November. Republican Scott Brown is mounting a surprisingly strong bid, trailing Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley by only 9 points in the latest Rasmussen poll. A state senator, Brown is running an anti-spending, anti-Washington campaign perfectly suited to the political moment.

Should he win, it could make it all but impossible for Harry Reid to get 60 votes for the current version of Obamacare — and he’ll almost certainly need to meet that threshold at least one more time.

In short, Scott Brown is the man who could pull the brake on this train right before it gets fully out of the station...

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