An enormously amusing conjecture from Boston’s News Corp. wannabe The Herald today. Buried in an article by Joe Battenfeld about how 31 percent of Americans now have have a “strongly unfavorable” view of the Tea Party, among other things, we find:
This indicates the most successful strategy for winning office in 2012 would be running against both Washington and Wall Street — a strategy already being tested in Massachusetts by Democratic Senate challenger Elizabeth Warren and the current incumbent, Republican Sen. Scott Brown.
Brown is a second-generation professional politician. His father was a Republican elected official for 18 years. The government has been punching Scott Brown’s meal ticket for two decades, ever since he was first elected to office in 1992. Being a politician is his career.
Indeed, his extraordinary success at enforcing the agenda of the national GOP, from opening up the environment to more pollution so that oil companies can score bigger profits, to voting against jobs for Massachusetts in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires, is in part due to his professional career politician smoothness. Typically for such creatures, he has disdain for the voters, which is why, just like some of the career politicians on Beacon Hill, he won’t even hold open public meetings.
Elizabeth Warren, by contrast, famously took on the Washington establishment to win approval of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has had more public meetings as a private citizen, not being paid by the state, than Brown has held as a U.S. Senator pulling in $174,000 a year salary and full health care paid for by the people he can’t bear to meet.
Steve Stein says
Not even 2 decades have passed since 1992. Exaggeration is pointless.
Bob Neer says
I guess it just felt like three decades. It’s an easy mistake to make, after all: Brown has only been Senator for less than two years, but given how effective he has been at advancing the agenda of the national Republican Party and D.C. insiders in general in Washington, it seems like a lifetime.
laurenceglavin says
Romney’s statement about porn being a possible cause of the VA Tech shooter’s assault, and the Marriott Corporation’s comfort with X-rated videos in its rooms is NUMBER SIXTY-NINE on Think Progress’s list. A coincidence?
undercenter says
professional pol? Methinks your nose is growing! Brown’s dad served on the Newburyport City Council for 18 years. Since I once served on both the Foxboro Board of Selectmen and Planning Board that must make my son a second-generation professional pol too. I’ll have to remind him that he’s part of a political dynasty.