Today’s Globe has an interesting article about Scott Brown, the man who the tea partiers sent to Washington to stop the Obamagenda, and who turns out to have delivered not only health care reform (in a sort of backhanded way), but also — in a very straightforward way — Wall Street reform, thereby handing President Obama two enormous victories that may go a long way toward getting him reelected.
David Kravitz, co-founder of the liberal blog Blue Mass Group, said with a mixture of admiration and sarcasm that Brown’s vote was a savvy move.
“Mr. Washington-is-broken goes to Washington and learns how things get done in Washington,” Kravitz said. “And then he does it.”
Awesome quote, no? đŸ˜‰ But I’m hardly the only one to have thought of that general sentiment.
“It’s the kind of vote that he has to take in order to maintain a position of independence,” said Dan Payne, a veteran Democratic political consultant. “His reelection will be measured not by how loyal he is to the Republican Party but by how independent he is from the Republican Party.” …
“Scott Brown did a very good job, and was very involved, and very straightforward on this,” said Senator Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. “And he wanted to be part of the bill, and, in fact, was doing exactly what he campaigned on.”
The local tea partiers, for their part, are holding their fire. So far.
Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, said she doesn’t think people are “ready to throw him under the bus . . . but there’s a lot of questions and a lot of chatter . . . and a lot of perplexed voters.”
The national groups, on the other hand, seem to have declared him a lost cause.
“His career as a senator of the people lasted slightly longer than the shelf life of milk,” said Shelby Blakely, executive director of New Patriot Journal, the media arm of the Tea Party Patriots, which includes various Tea Party groups around the country. “The general mood of the Tea Party is, ‘We put you in, and we’ll take you out in 2012.’ This is not something we will forget.” …
Brown’s crucial support infuriated critics who believed that the financial legislation will lead to a bigger and more intrusive regulation. Americans for Limited Government wrote an online editorial called “A Lamentation of Scott Brown.”
Some of Brown’s former supporters posted blistering comments on his Facebook page. “Scott Brown is a turncoat and I am ashamed that I did so much campaigning on his behalf,” wrote one. Another former backer wrote, “I am hereby officially un-liking you.”
With this vote, more than anything he’s done up to now, Brown has made a serious stab at recreating a breed that many thought was extinct: the moderate New England Republican. So there are two interesting questions that arise out of that. One, can he/will he keep it up, or will GOP leadership beat him back into line? And two, if he can keep it up through 2012, can such a person be reelected?
the verdict seems to be split. RMG editor Mike Rossettie is very, very unhappy.
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p>I haven’t seen any reaction yet from the other editors – Rob Eno (our own EaBo Clipper) or Garrett Quinn. The view from the comments and from other diarists seems to be mixed.
We’ll give you Lieberman. Please. Take him.
so-called, is breaking down, why would Brown put his reelection hopes on them, trather than trying to build a new base?
… that Brown dogged them at Sarah Palin’s bus stop. He never was one of them. He just used their anger to get elected.
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p>Personally I am not convinced he is smart enough to keep his seat, and he sure as hell is not my kind of Senator, but I do like the idea of the moderate wing of the GOP gaining strength. Hopefully he will send a few more kicks to shins of the hard right before he gets booted.
is concern over the win/loss column rather than concern over America.
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p>Keep it up Scott.
Thank you for acknowledging something many of us on the left have been saying about the national GOP and Eabo Clipper-like activists for some years now.
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p>I’m glad that some of y’all see it as well.
Given that many of this crowd claim to be angry at the Wall Street bailouts and being shafted by the big corporations and banks, you would think they would like this vote taken by Senator Brown. As for moderate New England Republicans, I wonder how long Collins and Snowe can survive the new Maine GOP platform, which I can’t link at the moment, but is the perfect example of the Tea Party substituting a platform proposed by party institutionalists for one of their own. Let’s see how Brown votes on the merits before we get too excited. It may be he actually believes that it’s OK to end debate even if you don’t agree with the bill – what a concept!
(I’m a broken record here.)
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p>The Tea Party is not drawn together by policy so much as by the narrative. By that narrative, an evil elite has taken over the country and the government. Anything that elite does is going to be bad. In fact, even stuff that sounds good they think is part of the deception.
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p>So no, they’re not going to believe that anything President Obama supported in a financial reform bill is going to be good news.
He was one of 4 Republicans who voted to pass the bill (the others were the two Mainers, plus Grassley, who oddly voted against cloture). The big question, of course, is what happens to the conference report. So this isn’t a done deal yet.
It is possible that he truly believes that financial reform is a good idea (as I do). I am not yet ready to call him the Honorable Opposition, but I have to allow that he has taken a significant step in that direction. IF this is a real policy position, as opposed to a political ploy, I will look forward to more of this. Even if it is a political ploy, I will be pleased if he recognizes that the tea party can only get him so far, and that he will need moderate voters to get re-elected. Perhaps he is smarter than I initially credited him. (I didn’t credit him much, so the bar was pretty low).
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p>I still don’t like his policies (I may or may not like him personally; haven’t met the Honorable Junior Senator from Massachusetts). Still won’t vote for him, and will likely work for his opponent in 2012. But if he wins, having proved to be a moderate Republican, I will willingly congratulate him, and see what I can do to work with him.
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p>An unanswered question is whether a moderate Republican can win in the tea party era, even in Massachusetts. We’ll see. Personally I hope so; politically I doubt it, but there are 2 years to go, and a lot can happen.
I don’t know Brown’s personal convictions on the bill, but this seems like a good way to get reelected in 2012.
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p>The moderates in this state would be liberals in many other states. Keep up this kind of middle of the road voting, and he’ll be reelected by the voters. (Personally, I’d prefer a liberal, and I’ll be voting Democratic, but I recognize that I am to the left of the average Mass. voter.)