Posted on 01/22/2013 7:00:57 AM PST by cotton1706
In 2010, when Scott Brown ran for Senate in the special election that followed Ted Kennedy’s death, his campaign attracted sensational attention and an outpouring of financial support from Republicans across the United States. In 2012, Brown failed to defend his seat against Elizabeth Warren, in the most expensive congressional race in the nation (and the most expensive contest in Massachusetts history). Now Brown has a chance to run yet another senatorial campaign — this time, it seems, against his most formidable foe yet: 20-term congressman Ed Markey. If the Republican Party has any sense, any esteem for fiscal conservatism, and any regard for the views and values of young, educated Republicans — in short, any thought for its future as a party — it will not waste any more money on Brown.
Support for Brown from forward-thinking Republicans would be a misallocation of resources, and would undermine the party’s most important principles and long-term aspirations. More than enough funds have already been spent on a politician who undermines the party’s commitment to fiscal responsibility; votes erratically and unpredictably; ran a shameful, embarrassing campaign in the last election; and has little chance of winning in the 2013 race.
On fiscal issues, Brown has criticized spending cuts, and in an open letter expressed eagerness to work with Sen. Reid and the Democrats to fight spending reductions. Shortly after he was elected, he was one of only a handful of Republicans to support President Obama’s deficit-increasing “$15 billion jobs bill.” More recently, after publishing some incoherent and embarrassingly misinformed tweets, Brown was perhaps the most vocal Republican to praise the White House’s shambolic (and inaptly named) “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” and strongly urged the House of Representatives to pass it. Earlier in 2012, Brown voted against both a Republican proposal to extend tax cuts for all Americans and a Democratic proposal to extend tax cuts for the middle class; he was also the only Republican who voted to support Obama’s request to increase the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion.
Brown has made wholly contradictory statements and votes on many topics, including tax increases, the Ryan budget, don’t ask-don’t tell, and cap-and-trade energy policies. On other issues, Brown combines some of the most retrograde positions of both parties. He is staunchly pro-abortion, but opposes gay marriage. He is a “proud union member” who is much-derided in Massachusetts for his climate-skeptic comments. He’s voted against the environment and also against efforts to curb uninhibited deficit spending. In short, this self-styled moderate is a confection of backwards-thinking and morally bereft positions from both parties, and his positions are out of touch not only with his New England base, but with the future of the G.O.P.: young fiscal-conservatives.
Scott Brown’s 2012 campaign was roundly denounced by all manner of media outlets as being one of the ugliest and most “bizarre” in recent memory. As a Massachusetts voter, and a former supporter of Brown’s, I can only agree. The campaign was utterly disgraceful. Brown’s key talking points involved: describing himself as “bipartisan”; denigrating Elizabeth Warren for self-identifying as a “native American, a person of color … which,” as Brown cringe-inducingly declared time and time again, “you can see she’s not”; and referring to his opponent as “Professor Warren.”
Now, if Brown runs, he will probably face 20-term Democratic congressman Ed Markey. Markey is unapologetically partisan, and has been seen in his district only occasionally since first heading to Congress in 1976. But the Massachusetts (and national) Democratic machine has closed ranks around him and he is poised to face little primary opposition.
Markey’s official challengers have yet to announce themselves, but — as a Massachusetts Republican — I can only hope that the G.O.P. does not continue to sink its resources into another Scott Brown campaign. Brown has not only shown himself to be incompetent, inconsistent, and ill-informed, but he threatens to draw both the Republican Party and the nation in a dangerous direction.
Hopefully, Brown will see the writing on the wall. I'd like to see Keith Ablow make a run for Kerry's seat.
Scott Brown is a RINO.
It’s time the Massachusetts Republican Party nominates a GENUINE conservative.
We’re being Europeanized. It looks to me like the GOP is going to take the path of European “conservatives”. They’ll promise that they can more efficiently manage the huge government, not that they’ll cut it down to size.
Scott Brown fits the role of a European “conservative” quite nicely.
And Scott Brown is a gun control nut.
Just flush him - he is not worth any support.
He’s not a RINO, he’s a democrat.
How do you say "screw him" in Bostonian?
Unless there is a better, viable, candidate on the hook please remember this: The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good.
We will be learning this lesson FOR GENERATIONS as we and our children and our children’s children pay for obozocare which Romney would have repealed.
Now we have XOs up the wazoo, all against the Constitution and in place forever. These would not have happened if “That damn RINO” Romney had been elected (which could have happened had the worm-eaters not stayed home or voted 3P).
Remember my words and mark them...
Yes, the elites have been working to rebuild the American Consensus, when all in government supported the advance of the welfare state. Any opposition is to be marginalized. Boehner is clearly in cahoots with this movement with his committee appointments. And also McConnell with his constant undermining of conservatives in both the Senate and the House (in cahoots with Boehner).
We are returning to the glory days of the 1970’s, when liberalism was on the march and the republican party was thoroughly discredited.
However, that is the look of the scene at this very moment. Politics is very fluid and power doesn’t last for long. LBJ won a stunning victory in ‘64 but his party was bitterly defeated at the polls two years later and four years later the presidency was lost. Due to Watergate, the republicans lost in a rout in ‘74 but then achieved a massive landlslide in 1980. Bush won a great victory in ‘04 and two years later the democrats took the congress and two years after that, the presidency. There are events yet to come that we can’t predict that will affect the political scene. The politicians and the media will attempt to manipulate them but they have tried that before with both success and failure. We shall see.
“...If the Republican Party has any sense, any esteem for fiscal conservatism, and any regard for the views and values of young, educated Republicans — in short, any thought for its future as a party ...”
Now, there’s the rub, because the RONO-ublican party has none of that.
Shove it, RINOs, you’ve doomed us to the upcoming civil war. However, after that is won by the good side, we’ll be looking for you.
I agree with the author entirely. I actually contributed to Brown’s original campaign for Swimmer Ted’s seat. Scott Brown was the vote that would have defeated Obamacare if it had come to another vote. However, it didn’t, and Brown became an Uber-RINO in an attempt to hang onto power. Besides, he’s a loser and will go down in defeat against whomever he runs against. Adios, Scott.
Scott is a huge RINO
A race between a Democrat and a democrat - the Democrat wins all the time.
(he got in last time because there were many unenrolled and dems that understood the harm Obamacare would bring - now no one is paying attention.....hey, global warming is back as real too...)
I think we've had enough moral victories. Let's nominate somebody that can WIN.
We need a majority to unseat Reid in the senate.
Reid is the real power behind the throne.
Sounds like the description of a good “Establishment Republican”.....just like McConnell and Boehner.
> How do you say “screw him” in Bostonian?
It sounds something like this ... scroom.
I agree. Let the establishment fund and staff his campaign. They think we are a bunch of ignorant rubes that don’t know jack about politics. Let them prove it in Massachusetts.
“Unless there is a better, viable, candidate on the hook please remember this: The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good.”
We have been subjected to this argument for years and I’ve heard that stupid, liberal quote any number of times.
Should Brown be elected again, before long he would pull a Jim Jeffords. Remember him. Elected as a republican in Vermont because “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” After winning election as a republican in 2000, he all of a sudden felt uncomfortable with the republican party and gave control of the senate to the democrats. Arlen Specter, same thing. Lincoln Chafee, same thing. Charlie Crist, same thing. John Huntsman is also no longer a republican.
It is nonsense that a principled conservative can’t win in a state like Massachusetts. Brown ran as a conservative and won in 2010. He ran as an independent in 2012 and lost, trying to out-liberal the liberal. And we at least need to try, to challenge the liberal outlook in this state. Ted Kennedy is dead and with all the corruption in the democratic party and the fraud in the legislature, a hard-liner, not a mushy moderate, could convince the people to vote for him/her.
“We shall see.”
I agree. No one can possibly know what is coming next. A Republican resurgence isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but I see it as unlikely. The mid terms will be very telling. The takers and the celebrity worshipers historically don’t turn out in big numbers for the mid terms. If the Republicans get waxed in 2014, that will be devastating with respect to any Republican resurgence in the near future. It will cement the shift of the American public leftward.
My pessimism has it’s roots in the 2012 election. Americans knew what they were voting for, and voted for an incompetent radical leftist. We lost the schools to the left. Americans are accepting of socialism, even desirous of it.
It will be sad to watch, but incredibly interesting.
“Skhru im”
A rino is just a fat neutered unicorn.
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