Legislative leaders in Massachusetts believe they have enough votes to give Governor Deval Patrick (D) the power to appoint an interim US senator to Ted Kennedy's vacant seat. Such an appointment would allow Democrats to regain the supermajority of 60 in the Senate allowing the Obama administration to ram through controversial legislation such as health care reform and cap & trade without Republican interference.

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But the Republican minority in Massachusetts state government isn't ready to roll over and play dead quite yet. In a recent interview State Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei said "The fact that they think this is going to move like a knife through a stick of butter - that this is going to be a ‘shazamm’ bill that goes through - well, it’s not. We’re going to slow it down." (source)

Through parliamentary maneuvers, Republicans could delay the bill allowing the appointment until the special election in January thereby making the appointment issue moot. It would be interesting to see if the Democrats still want to make the change in state law to allow a gubernatorial appointment when they are no longer certain a Governor from their party will be in power next time the issue arises.

Current law requiring a special election be held was adopted in 2004 when Democrats feared then-Governor Mitt Romney (R) would appoint a Republican replacement to fill Senator John Kerry's (D-Massachusetts) seat should he win the presidential election. Before that successful effort by Democrats to change the law to its current form it had been exactly the way the Democrats want it changed now. Amazing how what they think is the right thing to do keeps changing with their political fortunes.