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Feature
Scott Brown’s Balancing Act
It’s not easy being Brown in a blue state.
On the dais at Boston Marriott Copley Place, Ann Romney beamed as she rattled off the names of all the politicians who had helped her husband on Super Tuesday. She didn’t forget the home crowd. “And finally, thank you Massachusetts,” the commonwealth’s former first lady exclaimed, singling out “our senator, Scott Brown” for praise.
Brown, of course, wasn’t there. Even in Boston, a Mitt Romney for president rally is likely to draw a partisan Republican crowd. As a senator who probably needs to win two-thirds of independent voters this fall in a state the incumbent Democratic president is likely to carry, Brown didn’t need to be seen on stage while Romney was throwing out red meat about the flaws and failures of Barack Obama.
That’s not to say that Brown, who endorsed Romney, wasn’t happy to see the former governor do well. Romney, who won the semi-open Massachusetts primary with 72 percent of the vote, is the only Republican nominee who can keep the presidential contest in the Bay State close enough for Brown to realistically win enough ticket-splitters to hold on to his Senate seat. It’s a difficult balancing act that Brown has to maintain in a tough political environment, but so far he hasn’t stumbled.
Much has changed since Brown—hyperbolically dubbed “the Scott heard ’round the world”—captured Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in a January 2010 special election. He was the first Republican to win statewide since Romney eight years earlier, the first GOP member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation since January 1997, and the state’s first Republican senator since Edward Brooke’s second term expired in 1979 after he lost re-election to Paul Tsongas.
Two years ago, Brown caught both state and national Democrats almost completely by surprise. By the time they realized Kennedy’s heir apparent Martha Coakley was in trouble, it was too late. A full court press by a who’s who of Democrats ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry couldn’t put Humpty back together again.
Brown was also a national conservative cause, as people donated money far and wide to see a Republican sitting in Kennedy’s seat. Brown campaigned openly as the 41st vote against Obamacare. His election would not only restore the Republicans’ power to filibuster the dreaded health care bill, but also prove that the legislation was unpopular even in Kennedy country. He became a Tea Party cause célèbre, and the burgeoning grassroots movement saw his upset victory as a sign of their national potential in November 2010.
Now Brown is the incumbent, running in plain sight of Democratic operatives nationally and in Massachusetts. Representing one of the country’s bluest states, he sits high atop their target lists. After a series of feints to the center, Brown is no longer a national Tea Party favorite. One local Tea Party group, in fact, hoped to find a Republican primary challenger. Brown has been equally offhand with the movement, downplaying its role in his election and declining to appear at some Tea Party rallies.
This time around, likely Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren is a national progressive darling. She is more a symbol of Occupy Wall Street than Brown ever was the Tea Party. She is attracting the out-of-state political contributions and hauling in more money than Brown in some quarters of fundraising. And Warren radiates the kind of energy that once animated the Brown campaign.
Despite all this, Scott Brown still has a fighting chance. After early polls showed Warren pulling ahead, four of the five next major surveys found Brown leading by as many as nine points. In March, the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling had Warren back out in front by five points. But even that poll, which sampled registered rather than likely voters, showed Brown with a double-digit lead among independents, pulling 17 percent of Democrats, and pitching a Curt Schilling-like shutout among Republicans.
BROWN HAD TRIED to demonstrate his independence from the national GOP in order to cultivate unaffiliated voters and soft Democrats. During the lame-duck congressional session, he broke with conservatives by supporting the New Start Treaty and an end to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning gays in the military. Brown was a member of the Army National Guard, had advocated for veterans in the Massachusetts legislature, and had mostly sided with hawks during his special election campaign, so both votes were considered a surprise—and a betrayal by his more conservative supporters.
Yet Brown also voted to retain the Bush tax cuts and opposed the DREAM Act, which he labeled amnesty for illegal immigrants. He sided with social liberals on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, saying a GOP plan to defund the organization—which is the nation’s top abortion provider but also performs women’s health services—“goes too far.” Brown then joined social conservatives in opposing the contraceptive mandate the Obama Department of Health and Human Services imposed on religious institutions.
This triangulation has won Brown enemies on both sides. For his opposition to the HHS mandate, the Boston Phoenix blasted him as “Scott Brown, crazy person.” The liberal alt-weekly editorialized that Brown had joined “the Republican cult against birth control” and the “vast and growing right-wing war on women.” Meanwhile, conservative activists complained that Brown was too liberal.
“There’s enough of an underground movement in the Tea Party movement as seeing him as not being conservative enough,” Christen Varley, then president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, told the Boston Globe (which also occasionally reads like a liberal alt-weekly), in December 2010. “There probably will be multiple people who attempt to run against him.” And while no such primary challenge has materialized, Brown’s vote for the Dodd-Frank financial reforms—arguably his biggest transgression against conservative principles—will almost certainly keep him from receiving major national Tea Party support this fall.
But the fallout from his juggling hasn’t been entirely negative. Several polls have shown Brown to have high approval ratings among independents, now a plurality of Massachusetts’ registered voters. There is a reason he is hovering at around 90 percent support from Republicans while also getting a larger crossover vote than Warren: he has demonstrated finesse at dealing with controversial issues.
Consider contraceptives, where he has simultaneously opposed the HHS mandate and criticized Rush Limbaugh for his comments about Sandra Fluke. “Brown’s stance on birth control might still hurt him among women, who are important swing voters in Massachusetts,” writes political journalist David Bernstein (in the Phoenix of all places). “But he is probably helping himself among conservative Catholic Democrats, who were key to his victory two years ago.”
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (42) | Leave a comment
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Erling| 5.1.12 @ 7:43AM
Nice try, but I'm not buying. It's not only his betrayal of centuries of English and American military custom to limit its membership to those who do not practice buggery, but I noticed a photo of Brown in uniform after making a VIP trip to Afghanistan that he wore a combat patch on his right sleeve. But did Brown deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom? No, he visited the combat zone in uniform for a couple of weeks; that, my friends appears to be a fraud.
Jack in Wi.| 5.1.12 @ 7:57AM
Another pretty boy, big government, liberal Republican about to bite the dust. Why vote for a bad immitation when you can get the real liberal on the Democrat side. If we are ever going to build a conservative small government party in liberal states we have to take on the liberals with true conservatives, like we did here in Wi. with Scott Walker. Most of these states are bankrupt and going deeper into the tank. Starting next week I am taking my considerable ability to make trouble over to the Milwaukee Journal webbsite and other state papers as well to join the war going on in this state. Win or lose Scott has done one hell of a job. Right now I think he is going to win.
I hate to disappoint all my old pals like Demented Dr. Wrong and the pychotic psychiatrist Dr Occam. But I am not going to be around here much, for awhile.
gearjammer| 5.1.12 @ 8:16AM
The northeast Republican is making a comeback-you'll just have to learn to live with it.
Clint| 5.1.12 @ 8:47AM
Republicans make up just 11 percent of registered voters in The Peoples Republic Of Massachusetts, with the largest group of voters choosing to remain unaffiliated.
gearjammer| 5.1.12 @ 12:11PM
They once were GOP. All these Indies. People out here-many-are horrified by one party nut job democrat rule. It may be too late. I blast them-tell them I told you so. So many are against GOP because of religion, etc-I tell the preacher man doesn't have his hand in your pocket, wake up. Still theyare in alot of cases simply brainwashed.
KennesawJack| 5.1.12 @ 12:25PM
You know, Jack, you are obviously an intelligent man but, at the same time, incredibly myopic. Think what it would mean if an incoming REPUBLICAN Senate had 60 Republicans. On the issues that are, literally, existential to our way of life, i.e. Obamacare, unelected Czars, runaway regulators, SUPREME COURT JUSTICES, Brown (and other moderate Republicans) will vote with the majority. If you're waiting for Massachusetts to elect a conservative to your liking, you have a long wait coming. Why cut your nose off to spite your face? Yours is a facile perspective and so incredibly shallow. It shows either a true lack of understanding of the situation in this country, or simply a suicidal approach to it.
gearjammer| 5.1.12 @ 8:14AM
Maybe his some in his unit deployed and he provided combat service support back home. Maybe that entitled him and others the patch. The military has many patches but you slander from a photo. The Globe which will do anything to destroy him is all over this guy and everything about him. If it is a fraud we'll know. He might win. My wife works in a
Boston hospital and it is unionized. Last time alot of her life long democrat friends actually strayed from party line-they liked Brown. They are not crazy about healthcare under Obama=raises are ancient history and more and more cuts occur. Not a peep from the union. After all these years, these women, who do great work, are starting to get it. Their 403b's are not so great either-some of them will vote for Brown again-if that happens he wins.
runnymeade| 5.2.12 @ 1:01AM
No, you can only wear the patch if you were there. And officers in particular are to be very circumspect. If you just showed up for three or four weeks even, sorry, no self-respecting officer is going to don the patch. It has to be a unit authorization, and you have to really have invested the time there to merit wearing the patch on your right side upper sleeve.
Providing any service "back home" or outside the combat zone never qualifies.
By the way, if Brown wants to claim himself worthy of the Army, he needs to get a real haircut.
i.e. the guy's a fraud.
Look for him to be the next GOP guy in a big D.C. sex scandal.
Anthony| 5.1.12 @ 9:45AM
If Brown can't beat Madam Marxist (Sitting Bull) Warren, the phony leftist village idiot from Harvard Law, who makes Coakley seem like Churchill, then all is lost for Massaholea.
Apparently, Warren claims to be a descendent of Sitting Bull, but the only thing she has in common with Sitting Bull is the bull****. Warren's defense to the charge of her phony Indian ancestry is that it was "family lore". Ah yes, being a leftist is never having to apologize for being stupid.
Oh well, not even Big Poppy or Bobby Valentine can save Massachusetts...... too bad.
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 9:50AM
Yes, Sen. Brown is from a blue state, but he is elected by the Tea Partiers, and he should never abandon them. Jack kemp was from NY, but he was a solid conservative throught his political career.
Bo Darville| 5.1.12 @ 10:57AM
Ummm... If he were a Tea Partier first and Massachusetts Senator second, he'd lose his re-election by about 90 percentage points. Senators from Wyoming and Utah have a bit more leeway. Kemp was a US Rep from a Republican District in upstate NY. A little different thatn being a Senator from a Democrat state.
rightasrain| 5.1.12 @ 11:06AM
I don't begrudge Brown his northeast Republican, blue-state squishiness. I just hope the Tea Party wises up and uses its limited financial resources elsewhere.
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 12:05PM
NY has some rural terrains, but its all Blue.
Tim the Enchanter| 5.1.12 @ 3:54PM
NY is not as blue as it appears. And I lived in Kemp's district and was proud to vote for him.
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 6:00PM
Gerrymandering took a heavy toll on GOP powerhouse in NY. I read that The Dems have dismantled all the 7 current districts represented by GOP lawmakers, hoping to clinch all 27 congressional seats in 2012. Pretty scary.
NY, IL, an CA, GOP got no chance!
Nick| 5.1.12 @ 11:40AM
"That nigger lover President Clinton had the pen and vetoed so many good bills passed by the Gingrich-led Congress."
- Written by Billy the Bigot, in the Time for Newt to Do the Honorable Thing thread:
http://spectator.org/archives/.....ent_749403
"[Miami] is infested by millions of uneducated Cubans and Haitian whores."
- Written by Billy the Bigot, in the Rubio's Nuanced Neoconcervatism thread:
http://spectator.org/blog/2012.....ent_805157
You're a moron and a racist, Bigot Billy from Florida.
GO AWAY!
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 12:06PM
Nicky, the stupid racist whore pig.
Go away, Nicky the Bigot!
Nobody likes you, you racist psycho, Nicky the pervert. Go to Hell!
Nick| 5.1.12 @ 12:10PM
But, you're still a RACIST PIG.
Just leave, Billy the Bigot from Florida!
You, and all of your tranny friends, GO AWAY and listen to Laddy GagGag, will ya'?
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 1:24PM
You're a racist PIG WHORE.
Just leave, Nicky the neo-Nazi from Detroit.
Nicky the racist pig.
Nick| 5.1.12 @ 2:39PM
Go pick-up some tranny hookers and listen to Laddy GagGag, Billy the Bigot.
She's a man, baby!
Why aren't you posting as Johnny Jackboot today?
You swamp-sucking RACIST PIG!
Bill| 5.1.12 @ 2:57PM
Go to Hell, Nicky the neo-Nazi racist pig.
You hate Lady Gaga cause you ain't got no talent, still sucking your mom tits, Nicky the neo-Nazi.
Tim the Enchanter| 5.1.12 @ 3:55PM
Flame war time!
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 5.1.12 @ 10:01AM
Apparently, Elizabeth Warren claimed Native American status in college law school directories. Now, she is claiming she can prove her Native America heritage but so far hasn't produced any evidence. Scott Brown should call on her to take a DNA test, not to prove she's a man, but to indicate if she's telling the truth on her Native American heritage.
It's a winner for Scott either way. If she's not a Native American Indian, then Scott can call her out on being a fraud. If she is an American Indian, then Scott can implicate her in the Custer massacre. Either way, I don't see how he can lose.
http://news.yahoo.com/native-a.....05205.html
The Democratic candidate is facing questions about her heritage following the revelation on Friday that she described herself as a Native American minority in professional law school directories during the 1980s and ’90s.
Boar Hunter| 5.1.12 @ 10:25AM
Just to update you, apparently a genealogist discovered that her great, great, great something or other listed Cherokee on their birth certificate so this blond haired blue eyed harridan is by extension 1/32 American Indian. It's a good thing she claimed it because no one would have ever known by looking at her.
As far as I'm concerned she's just another example of liberal hypocrisy.
rightasrain| 5.1.12 @ 10:56AM
Scott Brown has been a big disappointment. I hope he wins and if I lived in MA he'd get my vote, but unlike last time, he won't get a nickel from me.
randyinrocklin| 5.1.12 @ 11:09AM
I hope he loses, I contributed to his campaign the last time, but that's it. he's an ungrateful SOB, that did not appreciate who got him where he is today. he's nothing but a big RINO that we don't need.
Dagny Taggert| 5.1.12 @ 11:25AM
Well, randy, he's my senator, and like many elections, he may not be perfect for you, but consider the alternative.
By the way it's officially "Granny Warren" as annointed by our true local hero, Howie Carr. And Granny's listing as a Native American on the Harvard Law School staff was used in their defense of lacking diversity at one point.
Granny also claimed to be the "intellectual foundation" for the occupy losers. Now it's out that she earned $880,000 last year.
Phony Indian minority, phony 99%er.
She's a fraud, and doesn't have a chance. Brown may be a RINO, but no way a straight-laced conservative ever gets to sniff the senate seat.
Apologies to the rest of the country for our moonbat legislators, but Brown's the best we're going to do in this sad, one-party state.
gearjammer| 5.1.12 @ 12:15PM
You needed him to block Reid, Pelosi,Boxer and the gang-such an idiot.
Roscoe| 5.1.12 @ 11:10AM
The straw that broke the camel's back for this Floridian - ensuring that this time round, the Brown campaign won't get any more of my hard-earned - was his completely smutty, crass and unneccessary "joke" about Rick Santorum. That was the limit. I could maybe have gotten past all the rest of it, putting all the maneuvers down to political canniness (and necessity), as James Antle describes above. I could maybe have found another few bucks to contribute to his cause against Coakley. However Brown completely disappointed me that day. Any decent man wouldn't have said that.
Dan| 5.1.12 @ 11:48AM
Does the Republican brand suffer from trying to maintain a presence in blue states that are not open to a conservative message?
Are we paying a price in the Dakotas, in the Carolinas, in the Mountain West, for the watering down of our message, our theme, our agenda, when we try to maintain a presence in a very sick Northeast?
Sure, we all applauded when Brown won!
But winning the seat and trying to keep that seat are quite different.
If we just won those Senate seats from those states we reliably take in Presidential elections, we would be able to block most of the idiocy emerging from the Senate. If we were then able to build on that base, by picking up seats elsewhere, such as one in Pennsylvania, we would be able to get our legislation through.
Ask yourselves, why have we ever lost Senate races in the Dakotas, in the Carolinas, in Montana?
Shouldn't we ALWAYS have strong and staunch conservative representation form those states?
Shouldn't that be par for the course?
Dick Nome | 5.1.12 @ 12:58PM
Brown ran as a quasi-conservative then promptly morphed back to a RINO.
PolishKnight| 5.1.12 @ 4:17PM
Gentlemen, I was just thinking of something so wicked, and brilliant, that you all would just love it!
Indeed, the problem with the rust belt states being so liberal especially in senate seats is that the whole system is rigged for Democrat pork barrel spending: All of the pork, none of the guilt!
Consider taxachusettes: Tons of money coming in from the big dig, and defense contracts for those white collar welfare workers, and relatively few of the illegals migrate north up to there.
Well, we can change that.
Let's have along with crackdowns in Arizona, free bus tickets (or even one way plane tickets!) for illegals to Boston with a road map for all the (state funded) welfare goodies. If they love 'em so much, let them open up their homes (and wallets) Also, hand them brochures and DVD (spanish version) of the film "Bowling for Columbine" and other Michael Moore films outlining how great Canada's welfare state is.
Sound familiar? It's what Giuliani did in NYC and "encouraged" welfare recipients to move to Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania...
Clint| 5.1.12 @ 4:56PM
" New Yorkers get more government aid per person from social programs than residents of any other state, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The state's Medicaid program is the most expensive in the nation, driving the average cost of all government benefits in New York to $9,442 per person.
New York ranks 28th in Social Security payments per person and 9th in Medicare benefits. But the spending on Medicaid, the health program for the poor, is far above that in any other state. Only Washington, D.C., spends more."
albert constantine jr.| 5.1.12 @ 10:27PM
PK;
Don't forget to add Delaware to the list, as the mass of criminal offenders we've received in the last 15-20 years with "Place of Birth: New York" in their criminal history keep our prisons well-stocked.
David| 5.1.12 @ 12:05PM
Good comments, Dan.
gearjammer| 5.1.12 @ 12:18PM
Thousands in the Dakotas keeping track of Scott Brown-you got that right, tens of thousands. Yep, Brown goes Rino and then run to the democrats. Please become a political consultant-FOR OBAMA.
FWB| 5.1.12 @ 1:42PM
Doesn't that smoke hurt your Azz? Brown like every other politician can be recognized when he lies. And like every other politician we know he is lying because his lips are moving.
Bob Grant| 5.1.12 @ 7:46PM
Come on people. Put Brown in perspective for crikes sake!!
He replaced Ted Kennedy, one of, if not the most, despicable liberals in modern history. The state is heavily left-leaning so a Goldwater republican wouldn't have a chance. He's a RINO as political calculation because that's his only chance.
Having said that, I would make sure he remains a back benching senator WITH NO POWER as long as he remains senator.
Republican's can count on Brown 55-60 percent of the time to do the right thing. Under the circumstances, I'll take it.
Support the guy if you can.
POST American| 5.2.12 @ 4:20AM
---Great piece!
BTW ---CHECK OUT Joel Skousen's
May 1st interview on Alex Jones.
Informed speculation on the Globalist
setting up of the US for large, even
nuclear CON-flict with the
Russians and/or RED Chinese sprung off
-------a North Korean attack on the South.
ALLL to be used to finish off the American republic,
such as it now is, and bring in
capstone AUTHORITARIAN government
here and worldwide,--and OPEN implemenation
of their ever 'on the go' EUGENICS agenda.
--------------------------------------RIVETING!
AGAIN--for the hard of SEEING---
'KOREA, and NOT the long gone World Wars,
was (--and IS! the defining conflict of the 20th
century viz a viz the 21st."
-POST American
In this, the undeniable 11th hour of the
CFR--RED China handover and takedown
op ---the signs are ALREADY on the ground.
---------------HUAC/ Nuremberg 2012--------------
mmercier| 5.2.12 @ 5:00AM
Most here do not understand Massachusetts.
We are so far behind enemy lines, we have been left for dead.
No conservative here givesva crap for the rest of you all. We are as deadvto you, asvyou are to us.
mmercier| 5.2.12 @ 5:08AM
Forgot to add... we are hardcore bitches. The republic shall soon be modified by our action.
We started this game, and we will end it.
Remember where you heard it first.
From olde salem village, on the plains.
Goldwaterite| 5.7.12 @ 6:28PM
"Teddy Hereafter"
It seems that a couple of weeks ago, Lucifer himself was walking around Hell, observing all the suffering. He was on a mission to be sure everyone was enduring the maximum pain when he noticed a chubby old guy with white hair sweating and shoveling coal. The guy was obviously in great distress, but the Devil decided he just wasn't suffering sufficiently. So, he walked up to the perspiring old fellow and whispered in his ear, "Hey, Teddy, have I told you a Republican got your Senate seat?"