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Scott Brown Woos Mitt Romney Now
by Howie Carr, Boston Herald 6/25/14
What a difference two years make.
In 2012, Scott Brown was avoiding Mitt Romney like the plague as he tried to get reelected to the U.S. Senate amidst a tidal wave of Wall Street bucks and a million no-info Obamaphone-wielding voters washing over him to cast a ballot for the fake Indian.
The last thing Scott Brown wanted to do in 2012 was tie himself to a perceived loser like Mitt.
But that was then, and this is now. That was Massachusetts, and this is New Hampshire. Mitt Romney is riding high on a surge of buyers’ remorse, and it’s Scott Brown who’s desperately trying to nationalize his race against Jeanne Shaheen.
This time it’s Brown, not the fake Indian, who’s the perceived carpetbagger, even if he was born in Kittery and Jeanne Shaheen was hatched somewhere in the Central Time Zone.
Not that Mitt and Scott were ever enemies. It was Mitt who introduced Brown to the crowd that wonderful night in January 2010 when he took “the people’s seat” from Marsha Coakley.
It was just tactical for Brown to steer clear of Mitt in 2012. But now, unbelievably, Brown is as unpopular in New Hampshire as Barack Obama, with the same 52 percent unfavorable rating.
Meanwhile, Mitt towers above the other potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders in the first primary state, even as he repeatedly declares his non-interest.
Now Mitt, the summer resident, will endorse his fellow summer resident, and they’ll march together in the Wolfeboro Independence Day parade. Is it a game changer? It wouldn’t seem to be, but that’s what Brown needs.
He’s 10-13 points down to Shaheen, depending on the poll. The Tea Party is wary of him, to put it mildly. Amazing, considering that Shaheen was one of the eight Democrat senators to sign the March 2012 letter urging the IRS to begin its partisan witch hunt against the Tea Party “for the purpose of suppressing the First Amendment speech rights of certain nonprofit organizations,” as the Center for Competitive Politics put it in its complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.
Last night I asked my listeners in New Hampshire how they felt about Brown. Here are some of the responses:
“Love Mitt. Understand (Brown) had to run left in Mass. Will get my vote.”
“Scott’s out for Scott.” (And Jeanne is out for … who?)
It’s a tough crowd. For a lot of taxpayers, pragmatism has become a dirty word.
The good news is, Mitt has already seen this movie, back in 2012. The question is, can he help Scott Brown write a different ending in the four months and nine days they have left?