Now Playing in Massachusetts, by Jeff Beatty

Jeff Beatty

Posted 08/13/2008 ET

The thought of Sen. John Kerry and a president named Barack Obama loose on the streets of Washington, D.C. sounds like an idea for a horror movie. But it would just be a sequel to a disaster movie that the people in Massachusetts have already seen -- one which stars Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick.

Here in the Commonwealth, where I am the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, we are fighting to keep this “remake movie” from reaching national screens by prevailing in my election to the U.S. Senate over John Kerry and by giving the Bay State’s 12 electoral votes to John McCain. We have paid the price to see this disaster film once in Massachusetts and will not pay to see it spread across America.

From our view, the only thing sadder than a Barack Obama imperial presidency is the vision of John Kerry bopping from country to country as Obama’s “special envoy." Recently, their big budget screen test went international -- Barack with his long apology about American power before 200,000 at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and Kerry simultaneously chatting away on cable here at home. Kerry’s shilling for Barack cannot mask what we here already know: The combination of Gov. Deval Patrick and Sen. John Kerry has been devastating for the citizens of Massachusetts. Under Kerry and Patrick, Massachusetts now has one of the nation’s highest property tax burdens, is among the highest in per capita debt, and is one of the few states in the country to be losing population. Now, Governor Patrick is flirting with raising income taxes to wipe away the sins of his Democratic buddies. In short, the Patrick/Kerry movie boils down to a series of broken promises and failed leadership.

Patrick’s problems began only a couple of months after John Kerry endorsed him in the ’06 general gubernatorial election. Patrick ushered in his administration with a Barack-level celebrity million dollar inaugural spanning several days and touching every region of the state. Deval showed off more of his expensive tastes by ordering up the finest drapery to adorn his office, installing his campaign chair on the state’s payroll as “chief of staff” to his wife, and by upgrading the gubernatorial chariot from a Ford to a Cadillac. The press corps dubbed the flailing governor ‘Coupe Deval’, and watched as things only got worse.

Where Republican governors Bill Weld and Mitt Romney turned around dire financial situations by clamping down a Democratic legislature prone to run amuck, Patrick has shown a complete inability to check the power of special interests in the state legislature and in Congress. For months the relationship between the governor and legislature was positively toxic. Things quickly thawed when they agreed to a new “Life Sciences” bill, a transportation package, and other bills with enough pork to please any legislator. These packages are part of an authorized $16 billion in new bonding ushered up by Patrick, who has all but abandoned his core campaign promise -- bringing property tax relief to struggling homeowners in Massachusetts.

The only one voters dislike more than ‘Coupe Deval’, now polling at a dismal 41 percent approval rating, is John “Live Shot” Kerry -- alternatively known as a consummate camera hog and a do-nothing senator.

The nation knows John Forbes Kerry as the long-faced wind-surfer who blew the 2004 presidential election. In Massachusetts, Kerry is notorious for politically-calculated, self-promoting decisions. Here JFK means ‘Just for Kerry’. This is the John Kerry who voted for the war in Iraq, not for reasons of conscience, but because his political advisors in 2002 said it would make him look more presidential. He fashions himself an idea man on national security but before 9/11 missed 80% of his meetings on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and constantly voted to cut the budgets of both the intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense.

Kerry promised people here that the Feds would pick up most of the tab for the Commonwealth’s mammoth infrastructure project called the Big Dig. Instead this project is almost $20 billion and rising over-budget, and mass tax payers are now footing almost the whole bill. Kerry is a staunch opponent of efforts to the repeal the death tax, fails the taxpayer by taking more PAC money than any almost other senator, and has failed to pass a single piece of his sponsored legislation in the past 9 years.

To make matters worse, in word and deed, John Kerry has expressed anti-American sentiment throughout his public life -- beginning with his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. Early last year in Davos, Switzerland, Kerry ingratiated himself with Europeans by again making public comments that revealed his true nature and shocked many people here at home. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, he openly ridiculed the United States to the delight of many in the audience. "The problem with Americans is they have an unfortunate habit of seeing the world through an American lens," Kerry said. He also referred to the United States as an "international pariah." This is the John Kerry who could have written Barack Obama’s America-bashing speech in Berlin.

Evidence is piling up that Massachusetts voters are angry enough to shut this movie down for good. Despite the support of Patrick, Kerry and much of the Massachusetts Democratic leadership, Obama was soundly defeated in the primary by Hillary Clinton by 15 points or almost 200,000 votes. This fall, voters have placed on the ballot a measure to eliminate the state income tax -- possibly joining New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida.

A recent poll showed that in just two months, and without any advertising, John McCain has closed the gap with Barack Obama from 23 to just 9 points. I see similar gains in my race for Senate, as a growing grass-roots network of Republicans, Independents and Democrats begins to believe that we can beat John Kerry this fall. I wish we could take all the credit for these numbers, but the reality is that dissatisfaction with the Democratic leadership in the state, led by John Kerry and Deval Patrick, is powering much of this progress.

People in the media mistake the climate of anger that they think engulfs American voters. The media believe that the desire for change is directed only at Republicans. In Massachusetts, they might want to take another look at voters who just want to replace failed old machine pols with people who have new ideas and the strength of character to carry them through.

Jeff Beatty is the Republican nominee for United States Senate in Massachusetts