This flashback could be coming to the campaign ads of many GOP hopefuls, not to mention Obama, fairly soon:

Reason.com points this out:

One other thing to note is that Romney praises Kennedy for helping make the case that federal support was necessary to fund the state-based coverage expansion. Romney likes to criticize President Obama for cutting Medicare and raising taxes in order to fund ObamaCare. But of course, as a governor, Romney didn’t have the option to cut back on Medicare, a federal program. So, with the help of Sen. Kennedy, he convinced the feds to kick in another way, with expanded Medicaid funding that ended up paying for half of the program’s publicly budgeted cost.

The Massachusetts state law wasn’t as far removed from the federal government as Romney would like people to believe, which is why the Obama administration was happy to entertain pointers from Romney’s advisers when they were crafting Obamacare.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’m still not feelin’ it, Mitt.

From the LA Times:

As Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington struggled to find agreement on spending cuts and extending the debt limit, Mitt Romney struck a conciliatory note in New Hampshire on Monday by lamenting partisan feuding while touting his record of working with Democrats — even the Senate’s onetime liberal lion Edward M. Kennedy.
[...]
At both stops, Romney pointed to the warmth between former President Reagan and former Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill as an example of what is needed in the Capitol.

“I worked with [former Massachusetts Sen.] Ted Kennedy, for Pete’s sakes,” Romney said in Concord, noting that they disagreed on “almost everything.”

One issue that Kennedy and Romney worked closely on was legislation expanding healthcare coverage in Massachusetts. He recalled, to laughter, that at the ceremonial signing of the Massachusetts healthcare law, the Democrat had joked that when he and Romney agreed on a piece of legislation “it proves only one thing – one of us didn’t read it.”

“The truth was we had both read it and we’d found some common ground,” Romney said, “and I think that has to happen in Washington.”

Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were cordial in an “agree to disagree” kind of way and were tolerant of each others’ views — they didn’t have babies together. Too many “bipartisan Republicans” in Washington can’t tell the difference between “let’s meet for a drink and a few laughs” and a booty call.

Part of the reason Romney lost the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race is because he tried to out-Kennedy Ted Kennedy, and people voted for the genuine article over the knock-off, which is generally the case.

The “virtues of bipartisanship” sales pitch never fails to crack me up: “When a politician with an idea that’s 20% lousy gets together with another politician whose idea is 100% lousy to produce a compromise that’s only 60% lousy, America wins!”

In the 2012 election, if voters want a president in the White House who can find common ground with Democrats, they’ll vote for Barack Obama. Will Republican voters keep this in mind in the primaries?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The Edward M. Kennedy Institute will make no mention of these things, but if you ask me they’re worthy of an entire wing:

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy arranged to “rent” a brothel for a night while on a visit to Chile and other Latin American countries decades ago, according to a 1961 State Department memo obtained and published by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch released several documents said to be from Kennedy’s FBI file. The group said it obtained a cleaner copy of the State Department memo after a mostly redacted version was made public earlier.

The Dec. 28, 1961, memo described a tour of several Latin American countries Kennedy made while he was an assistant prosecutor with Suffolk County, Mass.

Traveling with a professor, Kennedy “insisted on interviewing ‘the angry young men’ of the country,” according to the memo. This included “communists and others who had left-wing views.”

Meanwhile, your tax dollars continue to be poured into a shrine to the man who spent his political life handing out somebody else’s money and taking personal credit for the philanthropy. Ted’s still managing to spend taxpayer money from the great beyond, so you might want to keep a tight grip on your wallet for the foreseeable future:

In the 2009 federal budget, $5,813,000 was appropriated to the project through the Labor Department and Department of Health & Human Services spending bill. In the 2010 budget, $13,600,000 was funneled through the from the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services and another $18,900,000 through the Defense Department spending bill.

In April of last year, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Edward Markey attempted to insert another $8 million more in the now defunct Omnibus bill.

With $38.3 million already in the Institutes’s coffers and Kennedy’s wife Vicki pushing hard for more, Andre Lafferty and the Traditional Values Coalition are keeping a sharp eye, hoping to prevent any more federal funds from going to Kennedy’s center.

The family would use their own money for this project but they don’t want to dishonor the legacy.

Wouldn’t Ted want these tens of millions of dollars to go towards health care for the poor instead of a monument to himself? Don’t answer that.

Last year John Kerry defended the spending, saying the EMK Institute would draw tourists to Boston. That should come as great news for taxpayers in Provo, Tampa, Paducah and St. Louis who are also paying for it.

Draw tourists?

“Honey, should we go to Disneyland, Hawaii or maybe Paris this year?”

“Forget about all that — we’re going to the Ted Kennedy Institute!”

If they’d actually build a brothel wing, then Kerry might be on to something. Now that I think about it, a KGB wing could lure in tourists from Russia.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Apologies for the title — it’s the Boston Herald’s wording, not mine:

The late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s son, Ted Jr., is among the names being floated as potential candidates for Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s seat in 2012.

Kennedy, the middle child of the late senator and his former wife, Joan, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Lieberman’s seat, which the 23-year senator is giving up when his term ends next year. One Kennedy family friend called the 49-year-old attorney, who lives in Connecticut, a “great candidate.”

Earlier this month, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, lamenting the fact that for the first time in over six decades a Kennedy doesn’t hold public office in Washington, said “we need a Kennedy [in DC]” (“we” meaning “the family” I assume).

The above story might not otherwise be worth mentioning, except that fairly recently, such as in this 2009 interview with USA Today, Ted Jr. seemed open to the idea of following in his father’s political footsteps (bonus challenge: guess which part made me spit coffee halfway across the living room):

Ted Kennedy Jr., the oldest son of the late senator Edward Kennedy, answered with an intriguing “maybe” this morning when USA TODAY asked whether he’d be interested in following his famous father (and his younger brother, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.) into politics.

Out promoting their father’s just-released memoir, True Compass, the senator’s sons did nothing to discourage speculation about the potential for another Ted Kennedy in politics.

“Maybe I’ll run for public office. I haven’t crossed that bridge yet,” Ted Jr. said.

I still haven’t gotten the stain out of the carpet.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Patrick Kennedy’s going to need a few more vodka shots after delivering another substance abuse prevention speech when he reads this:

The Obama administration gave the go-ahead today to America’s first offshore windfarm in the Nantucket Sound, overcoming nearly a decade of resistance from the Kennedy clan and other famous denizens of the favourite holiday destination of America’s liberal elite.
[...]
The Cape Wind project will comprise 130 turbines that are expected to generate 75% of the electricity for Cape Cod and nearby islands like Martha’s Vineyard. It could trigger a major expansion in America’s use of wind power, which currently generates only 2% of supply.
[...]
The Cape Wind project had also encountered strong local opposition, led by the late Ted Kennedy, who used to sail in the Nantucket Sound. The solid bloc of opposition from the Kennedys – even from the environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr – made Cape Wind a tricky project for Democrats. Even John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, leading the push for climate and energy legislation in the Senate, hesitated to come out for the project.

The Kennedy family’s concern for the pristine nature of the Massachusetts-area waters is irony at its finest. Over the years, assorted Kennedy modes of transportation have put so much oil and debris in the Sound that would have – if their last name wasn’t “Kennedy” – earned the family a handsome fine from the Environmental Protection Agency and an honorary Exxon Valdez crew jacket.

The Kennedys, the Kerrys and all the other “green” rich liberal hypocrites had a chance to set an example by “taking one for the team” on the “clean energy” idea they shove down everybody else’s throat. Instead they fought it, proving themselves the hypocrites we all knew they were — and now they get to look at the fruits of their labor anyway. I love the smell of liberal “fail” in the morning — or afternoon as it were.

The long and short of it is that the “environmentalist” left sure doesn’t act as if they believe their rhetoric about the earth warming quickly to the point of the extinction of mankind unless we do something about clean energy now. If we’re all really going to die in ten years if nothing is done, would Robert Kennedy, Jr. be arguing about the view from his living room? (don’t answer that)

As far as the turbines go, I think they’ll spruce up the Kennedy compound a bit — here’s an artist’s rendition of how it’ll look, minus the drunk nephews hopping around outside with their pants around their ankles chasing the catering waitresses (known to the locals as the “Hyannisport potato sack races”):

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Next up: ShamnesTeddy.

Morton Kondracke is leading the charge:

Along with a health care reform bill, it would be a fitting tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) if Congress could act on his other great unfinished cause: immigration reform.

For all his liberal Democratic passion, Kennedy understood — as few of his colleagues seem to nowadays — the importance of working on a bipartisan basis to get legislation passed.

He worked with President George W. Bush to pass No Child Left Behind education reform and a Medicare prescription drug law, though he ultimately opposed the final bill as insufficiently generous.

Kennedy’s death undoubtedly will elicit calls to get health care reform legislation passed in his memory, but reforming the immigration system was also one of his major goals yet unreached…

…Obama campaigned in 2008 promising that comprehensive immigration reform would be on his first-year agenda, but during a trip to Mexico this month, he said it had to be put off until 2009, an election year.

The administration is certain to call for swift action on health care reform as a tribute to Kennedy. But it also should accelerate work on immigration reform in his name.

The mad rush to capitalize on Kennedy’s death is yet the latest manifestation of Rahm Emanuel’s decree to never allow a crisis to go to waste.

I’ll let these speak for themselves:

Kennedy’s Death Spurs Calls to Pass Health Legislation

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office sent an email to reporters at around 2:30 a.m. today, just hours after his death, calling for the passage of health care overhaul. “Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” the statement read.

MSNBC’s Matthews: Barack Is The Last Kennedy Brother

Byrd: Rename health care bill for Kennedy

***

William Jacobson: Rush was right.

Strange, when Rush Limbaugh used the phrase “Kennedy Memorial Health Bill,” he was harshly criticized. But that was back in March, on the heels of the stimulus bill, when passage of a Democratic health care restructuring bill seemed like a certainty.

Now that passage of Democratic health care restructuring seems much less likely, I guess it is okay to invoke Kennedy’s name.

The U.S. Senator from Massachusetts succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 77 tonight. Put aside your ideological differences for an appropriate moment and mark this passing with solemnity.

There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now.

Yes, there will be a nauseating excess of MSM hagiographies and lionizations — and crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death.

That’s no excuse to demonstrate the same lack of restraint in the other direction. Not now.

ABC News reports:

Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.

The man known as the “liberal lion of the Senate” had fought a more than year-long battle with brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to…

..A hardworking, well-liked politician who became the standard-bearer of his brothers’ liberal causes, his career was clouded by allegations of personal immorality and accusations that his family’s clout helped him avoid the consequences of an accident that left a young woman dead.

But for the younger members of the Kennedy clan, from his own three children to those of his brothers JFK and RFK, Ted Kennedy — once seen as the youngest and least talented in a family of glamorous overachievers — was both a surrogate father and the center of the family.

And certainly it was Ted Kennedy who bore many of the tragedies of the family — the violent deaths of four of his siblings, his son’s battle with cancer, and the death of his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.

***

The Kennedy family statement is here.

***

From De Profundis, Psalm 130

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.
Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, shalt observe iniquities; Lord, who shall endure it?
For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness:
and by reason of Thy law, I have waited for Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath relied on His word; my soul hath hoped in the Lord…

***

The Anchoress has the best reflection and round-up on Kennedy’s death I’ve read.

Also must-read: Baseball Crank reflects on a Senate workhouse. Plus: Bonus video!

God save us from bipartisanship, part 99,995,857. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch, co-sponsor of the $6 billion GIVE/SERVE boondoggle, has dedicated the Big Government Trojan Horse to Ted Kennedy:

Sen. Orrin Hatch capped his decadeslong friendship with cancer-stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy on Thursday with a gesture that had Kennedy hugging him as other senators stood and applauded: Hatch renamed a bill they had just passed to expand national service programs the Edward M. Kennedy National Service Law.

“It is a great honor to be able to add the name of a very good friend and senator, one of the most distinguished of all-time, to this bill,” Hatch told the Senate. “We expect this to multiply into 7 million volunteers, and to call it the Edward M. Kennedy bill is a great honor for all of us.”

Ironically, when Hatch first ran for the Senate back in 1976, he said he was running so he could go to Washington and fight Kennedy. But they managed to become close friends — and worked on many bills through the years trying to bridge interests between liberals and conservatives.

About their, perhaps, last bill together, Hatch said, “It marries what is typically thought of as a ‘liberal’ instinct for government to make proactive efforts to help those in need with the typical ‘conservative’ desire to place more power in the hands of individuals instead of the government.”

(link)

On a related note, the congressional push to study a mandatory service requirement was dropped from the GIVE/SERVE package, but is part of a stand-alone bill to establish the “Congressional Commission on Civic Service.”

It’s HR 1444:

To establish the Congressional Commission on Civic Service to study methods of improving and promoting volunteerism and national service, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Congressional Commission on Civic Service Act’.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:

(1) The social fabric of the United States is stronger if individuals in the United States are committed to protecting and serving our Nation by utilizing national service and volunteerism to overcome our
civic challenges.

(2) A more engaged civic society will strengthen the Nation by bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and experiences to work on solutions to some of our Nation’s major challenges.

(3) Despite declines in civic health in the past 30 years, national service and volunteerism among the Nation’s youth are increasing, and existing national service and volunteer programs greatly enhance opportunities for youth to engage in civic activity.

(4) In addition to the benefits received by nonprofit organizations and society as a whole, volunteering and national service provide a variety of personal benefits and satisfaction and can lead to new paths of civic engagement, responsibility, and upward mobility.

SEC. 3. ESTABLISHMENT.

There is established in the legislative branch a commission to be known as the ‘Congressional Commission on Civic Service’ (in this Act referred to as the ‘Commission’).

SEC. 4. DUTIES.

(a) General Purpose- The purpose of the Commission is to gather and analyze information in order to make recommendations to Congress to–

(1) improve the ability of individuals in the United States to serve others and, by doing so, to enhance our Nation and the global community;

(2) train leaders in public service organizations to better utilize individuals committed to national service and volunteerism as they manage human and fiscal resources;

(3) identify and offer solutions to the barriers that make it difficult for some individuals in the United States to volunteer or perform national service; and

(4) build on the foundation of service and volunteer opportunities that are currently available.
(b) Specific Topics- In carrying out its general purpose under subsection (a), the Commission shall address and analyze the following specific topics:
(1) The level of understanding about the current Federal, State, and local volunteer programs and opportunities for service among individuals in the United States.
(2) The issues that deter volunteerism and national service, particularly among young people, and how the identified issues can be overcome.
(3) Whether there is an appropriate role for Federal, State, and local governments in overcoming the issues that deter volunteerism and national service and, if appropriate, how to expand the relationships and partnerships between different levels of government in promoting volunteerism and national service.
(4) Whether existing databases are effective in matching community needs to would-be volunteers and service providers.

(5) The effect on the Nation, on those who serve, and on the families of those who serve, if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were required to perform a certain amount of national service.

(6) Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young
people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.

(7) The need for a public service academy, a 4-year institution that offers a federally funded undergraduate education with a focus on training future public sector leaders.

(8) The means to develop awareness of national service and volunteer opportunities at a young age by creating, expanding, and promoting service options for primary and secondary school students and by raising awareness of existing incentives.

(9) The effectiveness of establishing a training program on college campuses to recruit and educate college students for national service.

(10) The effect on United States diplomacy and foreign policy interests of expanding service opportunities abroad, such as the Peace Corps, and the degree of need and capacity abroad for an expansion.

(11) The constraints that service providers, nonprofit organizations, and State and local agencies face in utilizing federally funded volunteer programs, and how these constraints can be overcome.

(12) Whether current Federal volunteer programs are suited to address the special skills and needs of senior volunteers, and if not, how these programs can be improved such that the Federal government can effectively promote service among the ‘baby boomer’ generation.

More than one out of every five dollars of the $125 million Massachusetts is receiving from a federal spending bill is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.

I call it Hyannis Pork.

Hot Air TV and YAF’s Jason Mattera teamed up for another joint video production. Jason afflicts the comfortable with a question for Teddy Kennedy about his estate tax avoidance strategies. Enjoy:

***
When I watched the Kennedy dynasty’s self-indulgent endorsement of Barack Obama yesterday, I saw a bloated, effete patriarch patting himself on the back and his candidate on the head. I heard empty platitudes and nostalgia and a desperate, windy plea for relevance. The hypocrisy of vicious, country-clubber Teddy K (Flashback: Teddy K and The Owl Club; Flashback;Teddy K’s unhinged diatribe against Sam Alito; Flashback: Kennedy’s shamnesty “Gestapo” rant) extolling Obama for “lifting up” rather than “tearing down” was nauseating.

New York Times conservative David Brooks, on the other hand, was enthralled by the “Kennedy mystique.” There was, gushed Brooks, “something important and memorable about the way the 75-year-old Kennedy communed and bonded with a rapturous crowd half a century his junior.”

Get him a drool bucket, stat:

The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.

How could the septuagenarian Kennedy cast the younger Clintons into the past? He could do it because he evoked the New Frontier, which again seems fresh. He could do it because he himself has come to live a life of service.

After his callow youth, Kennedy came to realize that life would not give him the chance to be president. But life did ask him to be a senator, and he has embraced that role and served that institution with more distinction than anyone else now living — as any of his colleagues, Republican or Democrat, will tell you.

“Callow?”

“A life of service?”

Here’s his distinctive diatribe opposing the surge in Iraq:

And one of his distinctive, race-card diatribes during the Alito nomination:

And another of his slimy, bottom-of-the-barrel attacks on Judge Alito accusing him of bigotry:

Download here (.wmv file)

In an era when America is still too divided by race and riches, Judge “Alioto” has not written one single opinion on the merits in favor of a person of color alleging race discrimination on the job. In fifteen years on the bench, not one.

“Distinction?” My foot.

Ugh. On the one hand, you’ve got to love reading the news of Billy Jeff pleading and whining with Uncle Teddy not to endorse Hill’s nemesis.

On the other hand, watching the spectacle of the Kennedy clan anointing their Chosen One as the man “to make America good again” (and what would Teddy Kennedy know about that?)–and watching Caroline Kennedy praise her uncle as a champion of the little people, a champion of civil rights, and a champion of “men and women in uniform” (what?!)–is like Ipecac for the eyes and ears.

Kennedy just referred to the “better angels of our nature.” Again: What would he know about that?

My eyes. My ears.

1:13pm Eastern. He’s still talking. Lots of anti-Clinton jabs: “Let us reject the counsels of doubt and calculation.” Knocks “petty” and “stale” politics.

Sen. Windbag stiiiill going: “I love this country…I know what America can achieve. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it…with Barack Obama, we can do it again…I know he’s ready to be president from Day One…I believe a waaaaaave of change is setting across America-er…It is time now for Barack Obama.”

Oh, gawd. The Kennedys all look so smug and self-satisfied and patronizing. Ick, ick.

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews says it’s like the 1960s all over again.

Obama thanks “all the Kennedys…for the service you’ve rendered to this country…I know the cherished place the Kennedys hold in the hearts of the American people….the Kennedy family has always stood for what’s best about the Democratic Party and what’s best about America…”

Obama praises Teddy K for “lifting the country up” rather than “tearing political opponents down.”

Horse-hockey.

Flashback: Teddy K and The Owl Club.
Flashback: Teddy K’s unhinged diatribe against Sam Alito
Flashback: Kennedy’s shamnesty “Gestapo” rant

At least Kennedy succeeded in avoiding another Osama-Obama bungle…

1:33pm Eastern. Flipping through the cable stations, there’s a lot of breathless chatter about this “monumental,” “breathtaking,” “historic” moment.

I agree with “breath-taking.”

Well, breath-wasting, anyway.

Meanwhile, Hillary’s got the all important Janet Reno endorsement.

***

“Frankly, I like Ted Kennedy.”

I watched Mitt Romney tell Jay Leno that last night.

My legs fell out, as they say.

“Like” is not a word a conservative should use when referring to the Senate’s biggest windbag, eco-hypocrite, shamnesty supporter, race demagogue, and conservative judicial nominee slimer.

And yes: Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.