Rigging the game

It looks like a bit of blatant partisan politics might come back to haunt Massachusetts Democrats.

Rewind to 2004. Republican Mitt Romney is governor of Massachusetts. John Kerry is one of the state's two Democratic U.S. senators. Mr. Kerry wins his party's nomination to challenge George W. Bush for the presidency. If he is elected to the White House, there will be a vacancy in the Senate. Under Massachusetts law, Mr. Romney is charged with filling that vacancy.

But legislative Democrats in Massachusetts, who dominate both houses, fear that Mr. Romney might select a Republican to fill such an opening. They can't have that. So they do what all good politicians do -- they try to rig the game.

Working feverishly before the election, Democrats ram through a bill that removes the governor from the equation. Instead, any Senate opening will now be filled through a special election that will include a primary to be held six weeks before the final balloting.

Mission accomplished -- although when Mr. Kerry's campaign sputters and he endures a stinging defeat, it all becomes moot.

Or does it? Fast forward five years. Ted Kennedy -- the third-longest-serving senator in American history -- passes away Tuesday, succumbing to a brain tumor. Massachusetts now has an open U.S. Senate seat. But the law calling for a special election has suddenly lost its appeal to Democrats. That was then, this is now, you see.

A Democrat is now in the governor's office. The old law would have allowed him to quickly fill the Kennedy vacancy with a member of his own party. But now, thanks to a statute Democrats embraced so wholeheartedly just five years ago, the state must hold an election -- and the earliest that could occur under the law would be late January.

In the meantime, because of Sen. Kennedy's death, the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate is now one vote short of the cherished filibuster-proof majority at a time when a host of big-government boondoggles are on the table in Washington.

So again, Massachusetts Democrats try to rig the game. They now seek to change the law one more time, to allow the governor to make a temporary appointment until an election can take place. Really.

But why stop there? Why not cut through the bull and pass a law stating that the appointment process will be in place under Democratic governors and the electoral method will be in force under Republican governors?

It would save them the trouble of changing the statute every decade -- and it would be a hell of a lot more honest.