Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Who is Scott Brown? A George W. Bush Republican

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Time for a quick reality check on state Senator Scott “$#%@ you, kids” Brown. The evidence argues he is a George W. Bush Republican; he should be honest about it. Stand up, sir, stand up!

  • Just like George Bush, he claims to be a compassionate centrist but is in fact a ferociously partisan Republican. “I have a history of working as an independent thinker and voter having over 6,000 votes and working across Party lines …” he told WGBH’s Emily Rooney in 2009 (1’40” in this clip). Rooney swallowed the claim in the interview, but the Coakley campaign checked the facts and found that Brown has voted with the Republican leadership 96 percent of the time. Last week, true to form, he announced that if elected he will be the “41st Senator”.
  • He claims to support Roe v. Wade but apparently hasn’t read the decision: it permits late-late term abortions, which he opposes. (Incidentally, he supported the anti-choice Stupak-Pitts amendment: 3’53” in this clip.)
  • He claims states should be free to make their own laws about marriage but supports a Constitutional amendement to prevent millions of loving Americans from building strong families – which would trump any state legislation on the subject.
  • He wants to expand the tax policies of the Bush administration, which shifted taxes from the richest to the middle class, working class and poor, blew out the national budget, and left us with the economic collapse of 2008.
  • He believes, just like Dick Cheney, that torture is a fine way to gather information, and thinks it makes us stronger to ditch the rule of law and principle of checks-and-balances for anyone the government claims is a terrorist. Indeed, interestingly, he appears to have an almost unlimited faith in the effectiveness of government programs and his fellow government workers in the area of national security.
  • Finally, he has put political expediency ahead of stated principles. In the same interview with Rooney, he said he opposed health care reform primarily because it contained a public option, and also because it would increase costs. The public option has now, of course, been dropped as a practical matter and the Congressional Budget Office says the Senate plan will reduce premiums 14-20 percent for individuals who currently buy insurance. But Brown still opposes it just … because.

    I wonder if former President Bush or Dick Cheney will swing through the state to stump for Brown before the election on the 19th. That at least would clarify the reality of this candidate. You can request an absentee ballot here, (deadline is Friday 15 January), volunteer for Martha Coakley here, or donate to her here and fan her on Facebook here.

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    • Comments

    1. Okay, this must be a joke, right?  Right??

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      p>I know that a Senate candidate having posed nude for Cosmo in his youth is small beer compared to all his substantive shortcomings.  But it’s enough to make even a teabagger laugh, no?

      <

      p>–TP

      • the time for joking is over. I don’t think laughing at the guy at this point is a strategy for taking him seriously. Martha Coakley clearly never did that — and now we all have to work our asses off in the last minute to make sure the voter pool is bigger than who the polls have been suggesting are most likely to show up. Otherwise, prepare to have Scott Brown replace Ted Kennedy and Republican excitement to spill over across the entire freaking country due to such a debacle.

        • There’s plenty of MA Democratic leaders at many levels who did not take Brown seriously and were satisfied to let Coakley do it on her own with no help from them… including many right here, Ryan…but we are so happy every good Dem is finally engaged in pitching in…

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          p>What is going on has less to do with Coakley and Brown and more to do with what is going on nationally…and the anger people are feeling on both sides…it just happens to be playing out here because we are the only election stage right now.

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          p>So let’s get busy and help.

      • refute the points he’s made with evidence that he is wrong about Scott Brown?  Why don’t you make the case for your candidate and his views instead of insulting Bob’s intelligence and integrity?  

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        p>More of the same.  

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        p>  

    4. It’s simple. As explained by Dr. Dean:

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      p>“We all voted for change we can believe in. If we don’t get it, we’ll get some more change in 2010.”

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      p>Democrats hold the Presidency and commanding majorities in both houses of Congress. They chose to blow off change – did not even make a half-hearted attempt.

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      p>So there will be more change.

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      p>Coakley will win Mass, but if a nut-job Republican can get any serious numbers in our Commonwealth, then I think we all know what’s coming nationwide next year.

      • I am currently arguing with a bunch of wingnuts and teabaggers on Coakley’s Facebook pages. They have taken over-there is no moderation on her pages. To me this shows a lack of organization and lack of commitment on the part of her supporters. You would never have seen this on Cap’s FB pages.

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        p>If things don’t change, we will be fighting a bunch of nut-job Republicans in the house and senate who know nothing of bipartisanship.

            • I do think Pelosi and a few others want to do the right thing by the working class.  But for Rahmbama and the rest, the very best we can say is that they ain’t doing any heavy lifting to un-%&#$ the rest of us.

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              p>Now the working class will have their say.

            • The sooner we all are able to come to terms with the fact that politicians from both parties contributed to the economy’s decline the sooner we can work towards making a better America for all.  Attributing the mess entirely to one party or the other is both wildly partisan and blind to the contributing factors.

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              p>Two examples:

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              p>Bush – Launched two wars while cutting taxes resulting in an explosion of deficits.  People who argue that the Bush approach to government spending should be a model going forward need to have their heads examined.

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              p>Clinton – Passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act thereby freeing national banks from the constraints of Glass Steagall which enabled banks such as Citi to expand into areas such as securities underwriting that contributed to the economic mess we are in today.  Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was one of the leading proponents of GLBA and is often credited with ushering it through Congress.  Where did he go to work after leaving the Clinton Administration and earn 10’s of millions?  Yes, Citi.

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              p>So we are all at fault to one degree or another. And since we got into this mess in a bipartisan fashion we need to work together to get out of it as well.

    5. Scott is still the better of the (viable) candidates.

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      p>My thoughts:
      1) Ideology–Scott just doesn’t strike me as the party ideologue you seem to fear.
      2) Abortion–Admittedly, his position seems a bit conflicted, not a particularly important issue for me.
      3) Marriage–This ones a wash. Neither candidate aligns with my position on marriage.
      4) Tax policy–Taxes (net of entitlement distributions, and Medicare cost recovery) result in an already massive, unjustified, and unsustainable level of income/wealth redistribution. Scott more than Martha seems to “get” this and isn’t fixated on zero sum, class envy driven policy.
      5) Torture–Scott’s unfortunate position on Water-boarding aside, I’m far more concerned by Martha’s discretionary choices as an attorney general (amicus briefs filings, Fells Acres, etc).
      6) Health care–To me, keeping health care reform from becoming new, massive income/wealth redistribution I see as a plus.

    6. Why, in heavily Democrat leaning Massachusetts, is Mr Brown a viable candidate?  We say he is a “GW Bush” clone.  He probably is.  So what?

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      p>What do we bring to the table as Democrats over Republicans?  The same wars.  The same ownership of the economy by Goldman Sachs and friends.  The same sell-outs to the power elite as the health-care bill gets committeed in secret.  And on and on…

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      p>I think people are disgusted that our behavior is so little changed from that of the Republicans.  It doesn’t seem to matter who gets elected.

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      p>I will be interested to see how many people will bother to vote on January 19.  I think the winner will be the one that can drag the most retired folks to the polling place.  

      <

      p>“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  — Emma Goldman

    8. Imagine if Coakley had not received the endorsement of the Kennedys.  Imagine if they had decided to remain silent.  Now look to Scott Brown and ask yourself where the last sitting Republican Senator is during this election?  As if to match the silence of Brooke, there is not one mention of Brooke on Brown’s campaign site.  

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      p>We can presume why he’s keeping silent.  Scott Brown is a Republican who is not in the mold of Brooke.  If you leaf through the Challenge of Change it is startling to read some of what Brooke is saying.

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      p>

      Does an American who becomes ill think first of freedom from “government interference” in these areas, or freedom for access to adequate medical care and the advantages of current research?  To those who have dealt with these problems, I think the answer is obvious.

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      p>Where is the media?  Wouldn’t anyone else like to know where Ed Brooke is?

      • If he does I can’t find it.  It’s notably absent from his bio page.

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        p>He does mention his military service. There’s even a disclaimer:

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        p>

        Scott Brown is a Lt. Colonel of the Army National Guard. Use of his military rank, title and photograph in uniform does not imply endorsement by the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.

      • Brooke is in his 90s and has stayed out of the limelight for quite sometime.  I wouldn’t read anything into his silence, though I would agree he seems to belong to a GOP of a different era.

    9.  But you aren’t going to like it.
      Just like Sens. whats-his name- and Kerry,you are a democratic party tool. You’d be the 60th vote regardless.  You better hope I’m not the bureaucrat deciding on your life.
      Just like Martha Chokeley, you are for abortion above everything. You got kids? Why?
      I know you’re gay. That 6% demographic of yours should rule all! Shoot, even Obama doesn’t go that far. Don’t even start, I’m not a Tisei fan.
      I did much better financially under Bush than Obama. Under Bush, I got a COLA for my SSDI. Obama, I got shit. I guess he’s too busy making bankers rich.
      Torture just doesn’t work. There is no reasoning with people who do not value their life.
      By expediency, I imagine you mean health non-care by Jan. 20th, Obama’s state of the union speech. Oh, wait, that’s when the 41st NO votebecomes a senator.
      We need Barb! not even you could could oppose her.  

          • They delete my posts on a semi-regular basis. They don’t like hearing other opinions opposing theirs.

            • Most of the time you write gibberish only understandable to yourself and perhaps some aliens on another planet.  

          • Because they show how incoherent and incapable of rational argument the Republicans are.

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            p>What has become of the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower?  None of them would be welcome in the Republican party today.

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            p>As I have said before, I am a strong Democrat, but I believe that we need a rational opposition party, one that does not simply obstruct all progress, but shares in the task of governing.

            • That we need to be able to have open and constructive discourse between people with various opinions regardless of which political affiliation they fall.  Would the Celtics of the 80’s have been able to compete as well as they did without the 76er’s pushing them every year?  I don’t think so and the same should hold true with political and public service considerations.

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              p>However, both your opinion and mine, while seemingly similar in terms of discourse and value of opposing views, is not welcome by the State Democrat Party whose current chair has stated that one Republican in state government is one too many.  While I understand that is part of his job, the tone of discourse within the state starts with the super majority party and I am afraid he is not leading by example.  He has been good at getting Democrats elected, but not so much in building bridges between the parties with his public posturing.  

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              p>Now I may be wrong, since I have only his writing and a couple of meetings that he attended, so please let me know if I am off.

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              p>I have said many times before, it takes all parties to solve the problems of this state and country and a one party approach is not conducive to good government regardless of which party is the 1.

              • What political party doesn’t have winning every election as a goal?  

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                p>What do you think his goal should be, instead?

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