Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate sometimes liked to raise money by invoking Teddy Kennedy as a caricature of big, fat, out-of-control liberalism. Kennedy was not particularly bothered by these attacks; indeed he joked about them. He could afford to, because he knew that if a Republican senator wanted to get a law passed, sooner or later he or she would be in the office of Senator Kennedy, asking for help. For several decades, not much got accomplished in Congress without Edward Kennedy's active support.
