I was alerted to this story while listening to the local re-broadcast of the Laura Ingraham show....
She was apoplectic....
I heard Ingraham yesterday. I think she needs to try the decaf next time.
Here is the complete exchange from the official transcript, as also shown in the article:
Walters: “The Tea Party movement was important to your victory. How influential do you think the Tea Party movement is going to be?”
Brown: “Well, you’re making an assumption that the Tea Party movement was influential, and I have to respectfully disagree. It was everybody. I had a plurality”
Walters interrupts at this point: “But it was part of it.”
Brown: “Of course, it was.”
The “Of course it was” is the key part that Ingraham left out in her tirade. Clearly Brown was trying to avoid Walters’ implication that he was strictly a Tea Party candidate. He also resists being called any label, which is why he resorts to the “Scott Brown Republican” label. He is saying here that the Tea Party was one element in the support base that put him over, which also included registered Republicans, independents, the Dems who crossed over to vote for him, and basically self-defining conservatives of all stripes. Brown is trying not to be pigeon-holed by anyone, most of all the media, right now. They are clearly trying to “Palinize” him. And he seems more sure-footed than Palin initially was at dodging the bullet.