Free Republic

Scott Brown was the Tea Party’s first big electoral coup. Then Ted Kennedy’s successor began siding, again and again, with Barack Obama—and now, as Andrew Romano reports in this week’s Newsweek, some in his own party want to oust him. Scott Brown isn't himself. Which is to say, he isn't sounding much like the square-jawed, truck-driving, barn-jacket-bedecked Scott Brown—the calm, cool, collected Captain America—who stunned the political world a year ago by winning the special election to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate. [SNIP] The strain of walking such a fine line must be getting to Brown, because as...

Republicans were forced to "back down" from blocking Wall Street reform, according to a fundraising letter sent by the president. In the e-mail to his supporters, President Barack Obama wrote that pressure on lawmakers forced Republicans to "back down" from blocking the legislation, which the Senate passed Thursday. "This movement proved again that the strongest special interests, who for so long have called the shots in Washington, can be beat," he wrote. "When opponents in Congress tried to block the legislation altogether, you stood up -- and they backed down. When the lobbyists pushed for loopholes and exemptions just before...

ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reports: Scott Brown is proving to be an elusive vote on matters of cloture. During his month in the senate, Brown is just about evenly split, siding half the time with Democrats and half the time with Republicans. For a man ushered into the Senate as someone Republicans should “exalt in” and signaling the death knell of Democrats’ super-majority, Brown has shown himself to be no fan of Senate Republicans’ slow-everything-to-a-snail’s-pace strategy. In two cases now Brown joined several other Republican moderates to buck his party and help Democrats narrowly defeat filibuster. The most recent occurred...