The Kennedy clan has always been a fascinating study to conservatives; we just can't figure how they continue to get elected. Senator Larry Craig is battling for his political life for copping to a misdemeanor charge that is specious at best. Ted Kennedy allowed a woman who was not his wife drown in his mothers vehicle while he slept it off and didn't contact the police. In fact, the first person he contacted was his lawyer and yet he remains in office nearly four decades later.
It's amazing that through the Mary-Jo Kopechne issue, expulsion from Harvard for cheating, sex scandals and various other unsavory issues, the one issue that has turned liberals against Kennedy is an environmental one:
The source of unhappiness is Kennedy's efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind was to be the first such project in the United States and a source of pride to environmentally minded New Englanders. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts residents in favor. But now it appears that America's first offshore wind farm will be near Galveston, Texas.
Proposed the month before Sept. 11, 2001, Cape Wind remains in limbo. It's been frustrated at every turn by a handful of yachtsmen, Kennedy included, who don't want to see windmills from their verandas. Many millions have been spent spreading disinformation and smearing the wind farm's supporters.
It says something about liberals that you can be responsible for a death and not be forced to resign but go against the environmentalists and you're despised immediately. Heaven help him if he ever votes against an abortion clinic being built in Hyannisport.
I've commented on this many times but it took a Froma Harrop piece to spell out that it is actually upsetting to libs. This is environmental hypocrisy on a grand scale and it involves not just Teddy but other Kennedy's as well. They have attempted to torpedo this plan since day one and have thus far gotten away with it. In the "do as I say, not as I do" world that liberal elites live in, this probably registers as a no-brainer--sure we want everyone to sacrifice for a cleaner environment, everyone except for them of course. Kennedy summed it up thusly: "But don't you realize -- that's where I sail!" Oh yes Senator, we realize it completely.
The fact that Kennedy has enlisted the aid of several fellow Senators speaks to the depths he'll go to keep this project from happening. Keep in mind that Senator Kennedy (along with Tip O'Neill) secured most of the money for the "Big Dig" in Boston -- the largest transportation project in American history -- that is already deteriorating from shoddy work. He could easily have this project approved and the money funded but, after all, that's where he sails!
