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The GOP Love Affair with Scott Brown Will Be a Short Fling
Have you caught the FEVAH?!? It’s sweeping the nation right now, and in an explosive fashion if my Twitter feed and e-mail inbox are even remotely reliable indicators. I’m speaking, of course, of Scott Brown Fever. He’s the darling of the dance, the belle of the ball and the newest rock star on the national GOP stage all rolled into one. He’s the David who slew Goliath on his home turf. And I’m already seeing some fever swamp rumblings surrounding him. These range from calls for him to be on the 2012 presidential ticket to demands that he deliver the rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union speech.
To his legions of giddy supporters, I say this… enjoy. Revel in the moment and pour some champagne. After the trip to the woodshed you took in 2006 and 2008 you deserve it. But when you finish cleaning up the dishes and putting the party hats back in the closet, I’d like a quick word with you.
Let’s stop for a moment and see just who you sent to the Senate from the Bay State. By any conventional, national conservative measuring stick, Scott is a pragmatic independent. Yes, as I’ve noted before he speaks the language of fiscal conservatism with a smaller government bent. But on a host of social issues, some aspects of foreign policy and a couple of other check list items, Scott is a moderate in both name and deed. Remember all those ugly things some of you said about John McCain during the 2008 campaign? Remember saying that he wasn’t a “true conservative” and he was squishy on immigration, campaign finance reform and several other issues? Scott Brown makes John McCain look like the founders of Club for Growth, Operation Rescue and the Free Republic all rolled into one. Remember all the nasty names you had for Dede Scozzafava during the NY-23 debacle? If you put a dress on Scott Brown (ugh… there’s a visual we probably didn’t need before lunch…) he IS Dede. Brown could have had Mitt Romney, (*see update) Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee on the stump with him in a heartbeat, but he turned them all away. Who did he invite to speak on his behalf? Rudy Giuliani from New York. That should tell you something right there.
Ed Morrissey has a great cautionary tale up at Hot Air today making many of these same points, which I invite you to read if you think my conservative bona fides aren’t strong enough to take this message to heart. But as you mull these things over, I ask you to ponder one other question. Is Scott some sort of mystical creature, never before seen in the GOP, sent down from on high to confound you? No, he is not. Scott is actually quite typical of the kind of Republicans we elect to various offices in the Northeast all the time and have been doing so since the days of Eisenhower. Call him a moderate. Call him a RINO. Call him whatever you like. But he came to the race knowing exactly what he had to do in order to win as a Republican in this part of the country. Plenty of Republicans do the same thing every season. And they are consistently pilloried for it across the conservative blogosphere.
When Scott Brown turns out to be pretty much at the same lunch table with Olympia Snow, don’t act surprised. And if you can manage to hold your temper in check, don’t browbeat him for it. That’s how we roll in the Northeast. You were never going to elect a firebreathing, bible belt conservative in that seat. But you did get a win… an important win. Try to keep that in mind as you chart the course forward in this year’s mid-terms and the battle of 2012. All politics is still local and the locals will choose candidates who best fit their needs. Scott Brown is going to have a HUGE battle facing him in two years when the Democrats will probably not put up another zombie against him and the perfect storm of opposition to health care reform may have settled to calmer waters. He’ll still need your support then, but he may have disappointed you a few times in the intervening months. Try to get over that now or you’re in for some sadness and anger in the future.
UPDATE: I’ve been informed that Romney did actually show up in Mass for Brown’s victory speech. Then again, Mitt came from Northeast origins himself.
47 Responses to “The GOP Love Affair with Scott Brown Will Be a Short Fling”
The GOP doesn't give a flying duck about Brown. He's a body to fill a seat for obstructionism. Particularly on behalf of MedMob's Congressional pimps. They'll parade him around or hold him back or do it alternately in turns…whatever the moment calls for to keep big insurance raping people's wallets and denying them care all at the same time.
Have you noticed that carrying the GOP label, “moderate” or not means sooner or later you do as your told?
Does not matter what Brown says, he can be relied to vote in lockstep with DeMint.
Good read Jazz. The GOP needs to try to support its moderate candidates rather than turn away from them, this is how you prevent democrats ramming stuff down the American throat. The democrats have turned on their moderates to a large degree, just like the GOP did when it was in power. If the GOP wants back in the game they need to support the “RINOS”, in order to take back the government and stay in power, they need to support them when in the majority.
Its a great opportunity for the GOP to do so now with moderates abandoning the Democratic party but I somehow doubt that the right wing of the GOP will seize it for long.
Brown gave me reason to coin a new word: Calicracy, The rule of the beautiful.
50 daddy warbucks dollars says that Brown gets caught dip'n his wick.
“Brown gave me reason to coin a new word: Calicracy, The rule of the beautiful.”
You're too late. That explains a big part of the Obama groupie swoon-fest last year.
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“That’s how we roll in the Northeast. You were never going to elect a firebreathing, bible belt conservative in that seat.”
Or in California (actually, on the West Coast), many would rush to add, but Upstate is hardly the same as Long Island or Westchester, there are plenty of non-Hollywood-SF-stereotype people still in California, fortunately, and outside the western urban metro zones, Oregon and Washington are often true Red Nation.
“He’s the David who slew Goliath on his home turf.”
Forty-One. Judah Ben-Hur…
I dunno about Brown being a new sister for the Maine Twins. The “RINO” types typically claim to be fiscal conservatives and/or for strong national defense, and often claim only to differ with those icky social conservative mouth breathers.
And yet… and yet…
They invariably cave on fiscal and natsec issues: voting for TARP, voting for bailouts, going squiggly on the war against islamic terrorists, voting to ban “torture” (*)…
If Brown actually DOES follow through on his campaign rhetoric as a strong voice for fiscal sanity and national security, but is moderate-to-liberal on social issues…well, I'll disagree with him, but I wouldn't call him a RINO.
A RINO claims two or three of the Republican tripod legs, but almost always fails to uphold even their own limited claims when it comes down to actual votes. So, if the Republican coalition is really an alliance among folks who are generally right-of-center on (some subset of) the “big three” issues: natsec, fiscal, social — what do you call those whose votes, regardless of their rhetoric, put them on the opposite side of *all three*? Not Republican. So, if they claim to BE Republican…then they are RINOs.
An interesting analysis from 2006: “By way of review, the defining moment with reference to spending came during last year's battles over the Coburn [anti-pork] Amendments. When you look at the list of Senators who supported those amendments, you find Tom Coburn, Jeff Sessions, Jim DeMint, and Jon Kyl – rabid social conservatives all. You know who you don't find on the list? Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Lincoln Chafee….the best indicator of whether a Senator is likely to support anti-pork measures like the Coburn amendments, is whether they also opposed government-funded embryo destruction or supported a constitutional amendment for the traditional definition of marriage.”
In other words, those icky social conservatives were better on fiscal issues than the “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” Rockefellerites.
Now, granted, except for a small cadre of exceptions, MOST of the Republican caucus in BOTH houses were ABYSMAL on the fiscal sanity issue during their four years in power (2003-2006), thanks to the “leadership” of the White House. And yes, I railed against them at that time, too. It wasn't a huge Dem/Left resurgence that handed Pelosi the House; a lot of that had to do with folks like me withholding support from “mainstream” R's who tried to talk a good game back home, but acted like…well, like Pelosi's caucus is acting now…in Washington.
(*) IMO, if a journalist would volunteer to have a particular “torture” technique applied to himself, in the process of writing a story, it is not torture. Nobody is writing stories about their voluntary experience with fingernail extraction, power-drill cranial surgery, genital electification, or plastic shredder podiatry.
Look at the extreme Liberal position of the former holder of that seat, on your link, LOL. Somehow your claims of uberpartisan right wing criticism looses all its steam when you do that.
I think Brown will fall somewhat closer to Evan Bayh than Jim Demint on that chart. You know Senator Bayh who has made the recent commentary that the Democratic party has become the tool of the far-left.
Far left has taken over Democratic Party, Sen. Bayh says
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010…
So, when Republicans elect from the right side of their spectrum, the Left cries out about 'extremist candidates'. If they elect a Moderate, then they get castigated by the same Left (and Right, for that matter) for not electing a 'real' Republican.
If we want civility back in our government, each side has to support the moderates in their party, and across the aisle for that matter. But each party seems to spend their time demonizing the centralists elected by both the opposition AND their own constituents.
The Dems' problem is going too far Left (the lib Dems in the House were the poster kids for this past year's misdeeds in Washington, and for characterizing the Dems currently, in case some remain ignorant of what's plainly in front of everybody's faces). That the “progressives” are upset that not enough “progressive” agenda items or goals were met only shows how extremist and out of touch they are. (I've heard whining already, on Stephanie Miller's show, that Evan Bayh's Democratic credentials are suspect and should be called into question. Nothing but “progressive” will do for the fringists, nothing but more of the same that repelled Americans this past year. They're kids — no wonder they want fixated on Reid's age this morning, and wanted people like him replaced with lots of Al Frankens.)
Does anybody trust ObamaCo (choosing members of the panel) or the Congre-Dems to do a good job filling, and reaching good conclusions by, the proposed “deficit reduction panel,” which nominally will be bi-partisan (to supply political cover on new taxes and on tax increases that will be found “needed”)?
Gee Whiz Jazz
This is one of those no matter what they do the conservatives are wrong raps, right?
Here we have the Rick Morans and David Frums moaning and carrying on about how conservatives are so insular, so parochial, so unwilling to support anyone not meeting a rigid set of litmus tests. Bad, bad bad conservatives.
So conservatives go and support Scott Brown and now we are getting the “just wait till he breaks your heart” routine one would expect from a petulant lover.
How dare conservatives not live up to your stereotype of us! How dare we actually pick and choose our candidates carefully!
And there are two elements of major BS creeping into the narrative here. First, who is pushing Brown as the candidate in 2012? What major conservative figure has come out with that? I interpret Drudge's headline as being a dig at Obama, not a clarion call for conservatives. It links to an AP article with not a single line proposing Brown as a Presidential candidate. Conservatives are wildly enthusiastic and celebrating about what he did with their support so some here and there may have proposed that George be sainted for slaying the dragon, but this does not mean he is suddenly at the top of the ticket.
Second, Brown is a far cry from Scozzafava. Not even close. He wasn't picked by party bosses in a closed room. He wasn't funded heavily by the RNC from the word go. He didn't have a conservative running against him. He wasn't/isn't an Acorn supporter. He wasn't said to be the most liberal candidate in the race by Daily KOS. And obviously he won his race; he didn't drop out and stick a knife in the back of the near-winning conservative candidate. And he ran in terrain which was the heart of the enemy camp, not a swing district. Comparing him to Scozzafava is more of a smear on Brown than anything else. He ran as the anti-Obama; she ran as the smiling collaborator.
The fact that Morrisey and Reynolds and others are throwing out a 'cautionary' note about Brown is in fact evidence that conservatives are a lot smarter and a lot more discerning than what the conventional wisdom of Moran, Frum, et alia have been suggesting for the past few years. Look at how carefully the “mindless” Sarah Palin played this race. A quiet endorsement on her Facebook the day before the election. A message of congratulations. She stood back and let the soldiers carry the ball because she was smart enough to read the district properly.
It's time to get over the stereotype of conservatives being a narrow, insular, closed minded, unintelligent uneducated batch of screamers and recognize that conservatives can think, reason, and make intelligent decisions. When you do that, your analysis will be more accurate and of more value in the field. (I say this with an encouraging smile; preceded by all due respect and perhaps a nice glass of wine — heh.)
“Rick Morans and David Frums”
And Brooks & Sullivan [gag]
Brooks & Sullivan — Characterizing BS
Brown, in his onstage style/charisma/communication skills, reminds a bit of Obama, and is every bit as qualified to be POTUS as Obama was. If Brown trumpets his own good judgment, perhaps we ought elect him President.
Separately: Tea Partiers are caricatured as one strident voice which has “learned a lesson” through their support of Scott Brown the left-center politician. The caricature is manure. Tea Partiers are not one voice. They are a cacophony. The cacophony is largely comprised of regular, flexible, pragmatic Americans who advocate small government and low taxes as best they can – including advocating via Tea Party protests. The caricature is a method of undermining the advocacy efforts of these regular Americans; is a method of turning attention away from their preferred issues (small government and low taxes) via focusing attention onto the ad hominem “one strident voice”. Tea Partiers haven't “learned” to be flexible. They are a cacophony of regular Americans. They were, largely, already as flexible as regular Americans are – including being as flexible or more flexible as the self-congratulatory “moderate” denizens of this blog and comments sections. The immediate and wholehearted support for Scott Brown is proof of this.
“Round up the usual suspects” might have been too ambiguous
Perhaps, those making a career choice of “Conservative Basher” from the “right wing of the NY Times & Atlantic” lol
Yes. It turns out the “barbarians” at the gate can do calculus, quote Shakespeare, read Proust, design buildings, and analyze complex situations as well as anyone else. They just happen not to want the government to be in charge of their lives and seizing their assets to redistribute them to constituencies dressed up as victims. Or to be the guinea pigs for somebody's social experiment run out of Washington.
We can make our own choices, can we not? And Scott Brown was a great one to make, thank you. Why not remain open about tomorrow as we learn more? The image of Tea Partiers rushing sheeplike to support or oppose any candidate for President or even a party is far wide of the mark.
good post gcotharn.
“right wing of the NY Times & Atlantic”
A.k.a. “Acceptable Conservatism”
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Incidentally, I got to hear some sound bites from Scott Brown just a few moments ago, on the Randi Rhodes show. (I love her NYC metro dialect and wittiness.) Brown was asked about what he'll do when he gets into the Senate and how he'll vote, and he uttered typical sound bites — unimpressive. Of note was that he apparently said he didn't want a big new federal health care bill but may have wanted federal subsidies or assistance to Massachusetts to keep its health plan and state finances going, for what that's worth.
Afraid I can't add anything to this thread, I'm too busy laughing at all the comedy stylings.
“Remember all the nasty names you had for Dede Scozzafava during the NY-23 debacle? If you put a dress on Scott Brown (ugh… there’s a visual we probably didn’t need before lunch…) he IS Dede.”
No he isn't. No even close.
Ties to ACORN and the Working Families Party? Dede, yes. Brown, no.
Support for Porkulus? Dede, yes. Brown, no.
Endorsement from Kos? Dede, yes. Brown, no.
Support of higher taxes and higher spending? Dede, yes. Brown, no.
Support for Card Check? Dede yes. Brown, no.
Sorry, but this Brown = Dede meme that has been floating around the past couple of days fails on just about every level. Brown supports the right of States to make their own laws governing abortion and gay marriage (although he is personally against both), which appears to be the two issues people are using to call him a squishy RINO and THE EXACT SAME THING AS DEDE SCOZZAFAVA!!11!!2 The facts just don't bear such a comparison out, though. Scott Brown is a solid, if moderate, conservative whereas Dede Scozzafava was a Progressive with an R after her name.
We'll find out eventually what Massachusetts and the GOP gets. Is it or isn't it? …
http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6…
Yup.
F_T, please no confessions here, this is a family forum. More likely, picking some poor old lady's pocket as he kicks her starving dog (Rep. characterization, ala, F_T).
Brooks & Sullivan — Characterizing BS”
You mean Mel Brooks. David is OK.
Was this meant to be on this thread, rather than on another? (see below) I'm no fan of Sullivan.
Sullivan: WTF, indeed, you and Rush are slowly converging in intellectual deficiencies (translation: your'e both schmucks).
Whadooyamean? The old lady's are already on dog food.
Which reminds me, I'm hungry. I think Almond Duck take-out will do the trick.
bon appetit
My suggestion to Senator Bayh is that if he thinks the Party has gone to far to the left, he should leave it, either become an independent or really go all out and join the Republican Party…
PS. This holds for any other Blue Dogs who think the Party is to far to the left.
Funny, I don't remember any of these people saying squat when GW Bush was starting two wars without figuring out how to pay for them, or giving tax cuts to billionaires and destroying Clinton's surpluses, or when he decided that torture was official US policy…
Funny how that works eh? Try not to confuse people by thowing out expectations of consistency or (god forbid) facts! All you really need to know is how to type – and stay true to ideological reflexes of course. Thinking is the sort of thing that makes this site immoderate.
The argument that Tea Partiers are hypocrites is common and specious. Tea Partiers are people who were fed up w/the Repub Congresses' spending, who then protested at the ballot box via throwing Repubs out of leadership, only to watch Obama's Dem Congress triple the Bush era deficits. The Porkulus budget bill is what generated the Tea Parties. There's a direct line from Obama's tripling of Bush era deficits to the beginning of the Tea Parties.
Separately: what does torture have to do with small government and low taxes?
JSpencer,
Let me try and wrap my feeble mind around your accusations. I am:
inconsistent
fact challenged
intellectual slave to ideological pap
failing to think
Okay: I'm guilty. Of all of it. And so what?
It doesn't change that Tea Partiers are a cacophony of many voices; are largely comprised of regular, flexible, pragmatic Americans who advocate small government and low taxes as best they can – including advocating via Tea Party protests. It doesn't change that Tea Partiers protested in 2006 via voting Repubs out of Congressional leadership; then began the Tea Party protests (the first protest most of them had attended, ever, about any issue) after watching, in horror, as Obama's Congress put the U.S. on a course to triple the Bush era deficits.
If you have a consistent, factual, intellectually solid different opinion, please share. Otherwise, enjoy the ad hominem, and tu quoque yourself until you are raw. I suspect it's all you've got.
Are you saying the people of Massachusetts loved George Bush so much that none of them criticized him? How's that again?
A government that is willing to torture is a government that has no respect for human rights, for common decency, for the US Constitution nor for Signed Treaties ( Geneva Convention) for that matter. A government that is willing to torture is a government that is willing to do anything and it does not matter how large or how small it is.
I know for a fact that none of them showed up to any of his events carrying firearms…
Unless you have a personal x-ray machine, and were there scanning the entire crowd, you don't know that.
And the “I didn't see anyone criticizing Bush” argument is a bit worn out. I don't see the sun from my windowless office, but that doesn't mean it's not out there.
Sorry, another thread.
“Sorry, another thread.”
That's what I thought. OK — so since I happen to coincide with Limbaugh on this (actually, with most of the universe, not just with him), I am living dangerously, at risk of being labelled a schmuck.
I am living dangerously, at risk of being labeled a schmuck.”
Nah, just Rush, even a blind pig can bump into a barrel of acorns, Limbaugh and insulting Sullivan.
We were talking slander of the Tea Partiers. Interrogation/Torture is not the issue which animated and generated the Tea Parties; which motivated people to make home made signs, grab up grandchildren, and drive to the protests.
I do prefer listening to Limbaugh to listening to commercials on Thom Hartmann's show.
(Or when what's on Hartmann's show at the moment is uninteresting)
Hartmann is his good, old self today, bashing the Supreme Court for its decision about holding unconstitutional constraints on political expression unconstitutional. Lefty temper tantrums galore! He's naturally calling it another Dred Scott decision.
Absolutely not!!! I don't think of them anywhere near that highly…
“even a blind pig”
can now, months after I've listed, time after time, after time, after time, the elements of reform to which Obama and the Dems should have directed their efforts, and likely won passage and public approval, now the Dems and a number of people on the “Moderate” voice are magically, fantastically, brilliantly discovering, or finally stumbling over, the obvious when it comes to health care reform legislation.
It's amusing as can be to see and hear this “incredible discovery” now, over a year later, by others, notably on the Left — along with the outrage at honoring the First Amendment's protection of the right to free speech, continued misuse of the term “judicial activism” by those who have defended it, now dishonestly misidentify it, and who exhibit an obscession with “corporate personhood” along with corporations as demons, while also personifying corporations themselves. What a laugh.
What a laugh.'
When the govenrment, and party washing machines are not on spin cycle, they go to recycle (of ideas).
“When the govenrment, and party washing machines are not on spin cycle, they go to recycle (of ideas).”
The health care effort was the biggest blunder, but was not ruined just by itself, but from a string of things that ruined it, such as the “climate change” lefty politics idiocy in the House (with the Senate having been poised to pass similarly destructive play-pen legislation of its own). But first came what's still related to the most important thing, the economy. The stimulus was a fiasco. I have yet to hear these politicians (the lefty dolts like Krugman already have taken the wrong positions on health care and everything else to date, and no doubt will do this with subsequent issues, too) come forth yet with a rational, sane stimulus plan, that includes cancelling the worst of what they sought earlier (oink, gurgle, oink, oink — squeal!) as well as giving us (voters) something that gives us reassurance that the worst idiocy may be behind us and that they may be acting in our and in our nation's interest — for a real Change [tm]. That would
give us real Hope [tm] as well as relief.
Meanwhile, the idiots such as on Stephanie Miller's girl-kiddie show are screeching that the Dems are insane for not having gone far left. (That's why so many people in Massachusetts voted GOP, yep…)