Senator Scott Brown

EDITOR’S CHOICE: Everyone is calling the Senate victory of a Republican for the “Kennedy Seat,” in Massachusetts, “the shot heard around the world.” It will probably block the health care fiasco, but more importantly it will likely bring the Obama socialization of America to a full stop. History repeats itself as Democrats fail to see the forest from the trees. As one commentator said, “Democrats are unpopular because they're rightly perceived as arrogant, ideological and fixated on an agenda not supported by the people.” Obama is dead in the water – either he follows Bill Clinton and goes to the center, or he follows Jimmy Carter and goes out the door.

The page Newsmax.com has polled all of the pundits on what many commentators are calling the most significant political election of the century. It is a total repudiation of the Obama excesses in spending and seemingly mindless largesse. This comes in a state with a 3.5-1 Democratic registration majority. And for a seat the ultra-liberal billionaire Kennedy family (Note: they don’t give their money to the poor) has held for fifty years. Obama and Bill Clinton campaigned there to no avail. The consensus is that this is the end of the Democratic Party radical agenda.

1. TOBE BERKOVITZ, Boston University professor of communications and politics says: "Sinclair Lewis and Frank Zappa both used the title, 'It can't happen here.' With apologies to both, it did happen here. The voters of Massachusetts added the crown jewel to the Republican off-year trifecta of wins in Virginia, New Jersey and now the bluest of the blue states, Massachusetts. This was the Ted Kennedy seat. Now it is the 41st Republican seat in the Senate. In a time of hyperbole, it is impossible to exaggerate the titanic implications of the Scott Brown victory.’

"The 2010 elections are off and running and the Democrats are dazed at the post. The voters of Massachusetts didn't yell, 'I'm mad as hell' – they screamed it. Every Democrat up for election in 2010 should be scared, very scared."

2. Wall Street Journal online commentator JOHN FUND says: "Obama's agenda is 70 percent dead. The House is unlikely to pass Senate a health care bill. The GOP's model to follow: Pace themselves, block healthcare, prepare both grand principles for fall and a list of micro initiatives to make average American lives better."

3. LARRY SABATO, University of Virginia Center for Politics: "If the White House and the Democratic leadership want to find a way to ram healthcare reform through, even with Brown, they can do it. The question the Democrats should ask is whether this is the wise move. Humility in the face of voter unhappiness, a demonstration that the party is listening and adjusting to it, is far better than a display of arrogance and legislative sleight of hand."

4. Fox News commentator and best-selling author DICK MORRIS: "It certainly is the revisiting of the shot heard 'round the world, which was originally made inLexington and Concorde, Mass. … that absolutely was what happened tonight.

"A shot was fired that will be heard around the world. The most liberal seat in the most liberal state went Republican. And it didn't go for a squishy Olympia Snowe Republican. It went for a real Republican."

"It marks the last bill Obama is ever going to pass of any consequence, except for bipartisan stuff. This is the end of the Obama ascendancy, because he has so systematically alienated the 40 Republicans, that now that there are 41, none of them is going to give him the right time of day. And this really marks the end of Obama's attempts to reshape the United States. He'll try, but he won't succeed."

5. Veteran GOP strategist and consultant ROGER STONE: "Brown's win is a victory beyond conventional wisdom or belief. Obama's victory in 2008 was clearly not a repudiation of conservatism or an endorsement of big government.”

"To elect a Republican to Ted Kennedy's seat, in the bluest of blue states, shows us how disgusted swing voters are with the administration. Obama pull his full prestige on the line by visiting Sunday, and now he tells us if Brown gets less than 60 percent it's a loss. Does the president really think Americans are that stupid? This is just the beginning of the tsunamis that will sweep 2010. But they will not reach full strength until 2012."

6. Nevada political analyst JON RALSTON, regarding the impact on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's re-election campaign: "It is bad news. It is very unlikely he will retire. If healthcare goes down, he is in big, big trouble."

7. DAVID GERGEN, former presidential adviser, on CNN: "This will be the vote heard 'round the world. It's going to have an enormous impact on Washington. I think it will have ripple effects even in American foreign policy. This was also a message to Washington. The people of Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, do not like the direction Washington is taking."

8. RICHARD VIGUERIE, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com: “Scott Brown’s election to the Senate is another example of the energy and passion that has been brought to the Republican Party in the past year by new conservative leaders.

“Brown’s victory would not have happened without the leadership of tea party activists, talk show hosts, bloggers, and others using the Internet. These new conservative leaders are forcing backbone and spine into the old and tired Republican Party leaders, who in early 2009 were afraid to publicly disagree with or challenge President Obama and his agenda.

“This conservative Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts would not have been possible 25 years ago before the new and alternative media – talk radio, cable TV, Internet, bloggers, etc.

“The next battleground for these new conservative leaders against the establishment big-government politicians will be in Republican and Democratic primaries. These new conservative leaders are gearing up to challenge the political establishment regardless of party.”

9. JAY COST of realclearpolitics.com: Presidents make political mistakes; every last one of them. This is an inevitability and a rule of political life in the U.S. Barack Obama has made some mistakes in the last year. He misjudged the mood of the country. He misjudged the capacity of Congress to legislate with a decent respect for the national interest. He misjudged the extent of the recession -- how it would affect unemployment and ultimately the public consciousness.

Tonight's result in Massachusetts is the first price he pays for his political mistakes. It will not be the last. Republicans may or may not take back the House of Representatives next year, but they are set to make big gains in the lower chamber. Only the hardiest of Democratic partisans doubt this, and even they are starting to come around.

MISCALCULATIONS: No President is beyond making such miscalculations. Many great men have made substantially worse judgments. Thomas Jefferson pursued a short-sighted foreign policy that damaged American interests in a futile attempt to punish Britain and France. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put the nation into the War of 1812, something for which it was grossly under-prepared.

Abraham Lincoln tolerated incompetent generals for too long, doubting his instincts and giving only meek exhortations to confront the enemy more aggressively. Franklin Roosevelt thought his landslide reelection in 1936 gave him leave to reshape the Supreme Court and purge his party of dissenters. These were great men to whom we have rightly built stately and impressive monuments. But they were still men, and they made big mistakes.

The real test of a President's mettle is not whether he makes mistakes, or falls into traps of his own making. Again, that's inevitable. Instead, the test of a President is how he handles the jam once he has gotten himself into it. Does he continue to do the same thing, hoping against hope that somehow, someway doing the same-old, same-old, will yield a different result? Or does he recognize that he has made mistakes, try to learn from them, and ultimately make adaptations? That's the mark of a superior political talent.

Frankly, I don't know what Obama will do next. His political biography is so slender that none of us really do. Looking back on Bill Clinton's remarkable comeback in 1995-96, none of us should be very surprised. He pulled off exactly the same feat several times before -- bouncing back from losing his reelection bid for Arkansas governor in 1980, then bouncing back after scandal during the 1992 primary. But Obama is a mystery, although with incredible hubris he has written two autobiographies about himself.

BLUSTER: Democrats should hope that he makes adjustments, and that the latest bluster from the White House is just that. Politico reports one senior advisor as saying, "This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt. It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard." Democrats should hope that this is just aggressive talk designed to buy the White House time to figure out what to do next.

If the President really thinks this, they are going to be in a world of trouble for the rest of his term, for it would mean that he's too stubborn or arrogant to make needed adjustments. It would mean that a comparison to Jimmy Carter is more apt than a comparison to Franklin Roosevelt.

Frankly, all of us should hope that this is just bluster from a typically blustery White House. Barack Obama is going to hold his office for the next three years regardless of whatever happens in congressional elections in November, regardless of how well he governs, regardless of where his job approval numbers go.

Let's hope that this untested, young, inexperienced fellow the country incredibly elevated to the highest office in the land has the good sense to recognize the message the Bay State sent last night -- to understand that messages of similar intensity will be sent in November, and to direct his staff to make necessary changes.

Watch Obama carefully for the next few weeks. How does he react to this Senate defeat? What does he do about health care? Does his message shop change its typically aggressive posture? Answers to these questions are going to teach us a lot about the still-mysterious person who currently holds the office of President of the United States.