"The man out to topple Barney Frank"

[WhiskeyGirl]

‘WHEN I was young, I was a Democrat because I wanted to help people,’’ says Sean Bielat, who is running to replace Barney Frank in the US House of Representatives. “Now I’m a conservative because I want to help people.’’

Bielat is a whip-smart 35-year-old Marine, a successful business manager, and a first-time candidate for Congress out to topple the 29-year incumbent whom many consider the face of liberal Washington arrogance. Mission impossible? Eight months ago, a political thunderbolt electrified Massachusetts and put Republican Scott Brown in Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat. Bielat aims to induce that lightning to strike again.

Is Bielat the right candidate to topple Frank? He certainly isn’t typical of the sacrificial lambs the GOP has put up in years past. For one thing, he’s a former Democrat: As a Georgetown undergrad in the mid-1990s, he interned at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington. But his views shifted — slowly at first, during four years of active duty in the Marines (he remains a major in the Marine Corps Reserve), then more decisively at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

“That was very transformative,’’ Bielat told me last week, as I followed him on the campaign trail in Taunton. Having gone from the “very conservative environment’’ of the military to Harvard’s “very liberal environment, I was playing devil’s advocate on every single issue. And before long, I found myself thinking that conservative ideas are actually a lot more sound — they’re more cohesive, they make more sense.’’

In particular, he came to understand that “market-based solutions are ultimately more sustainable. Government-based solutions, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how smart the people trying to execute them — if they’re a market intrusion, if they interfere with a functioning market, they fail. They’re not sustainable. They destroy value.’’

Bielat points to Frank’s long and ardent defense of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to their role in the subprime mortage meltdown, as a classic example of the destruction that can ensue when government prevents the market from operating rationally.

Can Barney Frank be beaten? It’s a long shot, no question. But even in Massachusetts, long shots have been known to pay off. Just ask Senator Brown.

I believe Barney's Democrat rival is the young woman he called a kitchen table.

more here - http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/09/08/the_man_out_to_topple_barney_frank/

Should be interesting.  I think this man or the kitchen table maid would be fine in Washington.

Maybe those in Massachusetts will embrace 'change'?

[WhiskeyGirl]

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked her then. "Ma'am, trying to having a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table, I have no interest in doing it."

Tuesday's faceoff is happening because Brown, a follower of the fringe economist and perennial political presence Lyndon LaRouche, has mounted a quixotic primary challenge against the 15-term Massachusetts Democrat-and Frank has agreed to debate every challenger he's faced.

"I don't plan to spend a lot of time on her. I think the notion that we should colonize Mars is not one I need to spend much time addressing. Or the fact that the president is like Hitler, or not like Hitler," Frank told POLITICO.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41861.html#ixzz0yxNfE8vk