Jennifer Rubin spots the New Jersey and Virginia governors’ races heating up. Meanwhile, as Ed Morrissey notes, “Two Dems defect in NY Senate, control flips to GOP”:
What better way to complete a day in which Barack Obama’s economic policies lose the majority in a Gallup poll, Dems lose the edge on the GOP in a Rasmussen poll on economics, and the Supreme Court apparently blocks Obama’s dictatorial dissolution of an American carmaker than to highlight a “parliamentary coup” in Albany, NY? Manic Monday turned literal in the New York state Senate, where Democrats Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate switched sides and gave control of the chamber to the Republicans, only five months after losing control of it:
Republicans appear to have retaken control of New York’s Senate after two dissident Democrats jumped the aisle in a parliamentary coup.
The flip of senators Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens gives Republicans a 32-30 edge in the chamber. Within an hour of the overthrow, Republicans named Espada temporary president of the Senate Dean Skelos of Nassau County vice president and majority leader. Skelos is the former majority leader.
WKBW uses some incendiary language in this reporting. It’s not a “coup” at all; it was a leadership change accomplished through a democratic process, rather than a Democratic process. Perhaps that’s why WKBW considers it a “coup” rather than a consequence of bad Democratic leadership.
At least that was the story as Monday night. In any case, somehow I doubt the MSM was uttering the C-word in connection with Jim Jeffords in 2001.
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