The Newest Washington Game: Where’s Mark Kelly?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Remember the children’s book “Where’s Waldo?” This incredibly popular book series used to display complicated pictures where kids would try to find Waldo. Well, I have an uncomplicated analog to Where’s Waldo. It is “Where’s Mark Kelly?”
So who is Mark Kelly? Few people know. He happens to be a temporary United States Senator from Arizona. He is up for re-election next year. He is also a former astronaut and a retired captain in our Navy. And therefore we thank him for his service to his country.
As a senator from Arizona, though, he qualifies for the “Where’s Waldo” book series. Where’s Mark Kelly? In particular, where is Mark Kelly on President Biden’s $5 trillion spending, taxing, and Green New Deal bill, which if passed would be the most transformational legislation since the Great Society?
The big government socialist Biden Bill is the talk of the town. Every day, it’s a top story in Washington and newscasts across the country. Everywhere you go people ask, “can it be stopped?” Why do we need more inflationary spending? Why is it going to make our taxes even higher?
Why does he want to supercharge the price of oil and gasoline, that’s damaging blue-collar middle-income families. Everyone’s talking about this bill, except Mark Kelly. No one knows what his position on the bill is.
That’s because in the past 8 months he has not said a word about it. Not a single word. This is a guy who is up for re-election, with a pretty shaky voter base. His Arizona colleague, Kyrsten Sinema, the state’s senior senator, has had plenty to say about the Biden bill.
Senator Sinema has made it clear that she cannot vote for it at present because it spends too much and taxes too much. Her polls in Arizona have skyrocketed because of her opposition.
She and Senator Joe Manchin are two moderate Democrats bucking the far-left progressives in the White House and Congress.
The whole country is cheering for them to push for a pause lasting well into next year. Ms. Sinema is getting heavy support from Republicans and Independents. Senator Waldo — I mean Senator Kelly — has shaky support, and only from Democrats.
Mr. Kelly tells people he models himself after John McCain, but John McCain was an outspoken guy, on everything. McCain frequently bucked his own Republican Party. Mr. Kelly is outspoken on nothing.
Nor has Mr. Kelly made one clear statement about this monstrosity of a socialist bill since taking office. At least we couldn’t find one. We looked everywhere. We looked on his official Senate Twitter account, nothing. He’s got 103,000 followers, which isn’t much for a senator.
To quote our great friend Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, “Mark Kelly has yet to muster a concrete public position on most anything concerning the bill’s size, shape, or timing … He could perhaps see the value of means testing and he trumpeted his support of a provision allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.”
In other words socialism. And that’s all we know about him.
Given the unpopularity of Joe Biden’s socialist monstrosity of a bill, I’m going to suggest that Mr. Kelly is going to have a hell of a time getting re-elected next year. I mean really, on a gigantic issue like this, “Where in Blazes Is Waldo?” So I have a thought: Save America, kill the bill.
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From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News. Image: Detail, via Amazon Books, of the cover of one of Martin Handford’s classic compendiums that challenge readers to find Waldo.