Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown better brace himself for more GOPers demanding refunds and perhaps a swipe or two from powerful talk show hosts: he was one of four Republicans to join with Democrats to move to extend jobless benefits.
What’s going on here? Brown still probably hasn’t gone over the line for many Republicans, but he clearly intends not to be a lockstep talk show political culture conservative and for good reason: if he has aspirations to be re-elected it’s unlikely that’ll happen if he does a Mitch McConnell imitation. He’ll have to chart an independent path and a difficult one — not losing GOPers but also showing that he is a more (here comes the dirty word) moderate kind of Republican, at least on some issues.
And what better- and safer — way than to do than then to cast a common sensical vote to extend jobless benefits to Americans who can’t gorge themselves in the Senate dining room on Senate Bean Soup and other delights like the well-fed Senators who vote against jobless benefits do while families in the “real world” with unemployed adults share a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli?
The Senate moved closer on Monday to extending jobless benefits that expired a week ago, overcoming a procedural vote over the objections of deficit-conscious Republicans.
The chamber voted 60 to 34 to proceed on a measure that would extend unemployment insurance, subsidies for the COBRA health insurance program and federal flood insurance through May 5. Four Republicans — Sens. Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) — joined every Democrat present in voting to move the bill forward, making it likely that the measure will pass in a final tally later this week.
The House approved the same measure in March, so it will go to President Obama’s desk if it clears the Senate without amendments.
Because Republicans stalled Democrats’ push to move the measure quickly in late March, the Senate was unable to approve the extensions before adjourning for the two-week Easter recess. As of April 5, unemployed people who had already exhausted their states’ jobless benefits were unable to receive additional benefits under the federal program.
Brown raised Tea Party ire back in February when he voted to end the Republican filibuster of a Democratic jobs bill.
And earlier today, the Boston Herald reported that Brown will be skipping Wednesday’s Tea Party Express rally in Boston with Sarah Palin.
Political analysts say Brown is just being a savvy politician from a Democratic state, moving to the center to cast himself as a moderate.
But others have argued that Brown has always been a moderate, Massachusetts, Romney-ite Republican, and his coziness with Tea Party types was just election-season posturing.
Could it be a bit of both? Brown may be conservative in some ways, but the bottom line is that he is a Republican living in Massachusetts — a member of the more traditional East Coast brand of Republicans.
Once upon a time there was even a Governor of Massachusetts named Mitt Romney who many considered a model of a more moderate form of Republicanism. But like a Senator from Arizona named John McCain, Romney later began running for President and a kind of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” book the old Romney away and replaced him with one who seems to utter words and ideas that the old Romney never did.
So Scott Brown will likely remain (moderately) independent.
Unless he runs for President.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.