Why Liberals Are Turning on Ted Kennedy

Hey, it's been too long since we had a Swimmer Alert:

Once upon a time, Ted Kennedy could count on his daily dose of veneration. The right wing hated the Massachusetts Democrat, but progressives honored him as a defender of old-school liberalism.

In a remarkable turnaround, liberals are now heaping scorn on the 73-year-old senator. Young audiences boo at his name, and the leftish "Daily Show" on Comedy Central makes fun of him.

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.

The towers would be at least five miles out and barely visible from shore on the clearest day, but the summer plutocrats resent any intrusion on their waterfront vistas -- and, equally, any challenge to the notion that they control everything.

"But don't you realize -- that's where I sail!" may stand as Kennedy's most self-incriminating quote.

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Kennedy did much of the dirty work in Washington, but he had considerable help. In 2004, Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican, added a last-minute rider to an urgent Iraq War funding bill that forbade the Army Corps of Engineers to spend money permitting offshore wind projects.

"Warner was dragging American troops into the Cape Wind war," Williams and Whitcomb noted. The outcry forced him to back down.

Why did Warner care so deeply about a wind-energy project in Massachusetts? Some of his fabulously wealthy relatives own choice waterfront property on Cape Cod. That's why.

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(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Elitist hypocrites.


"But don't you realize -- that's where I sail!"