Senator Scott Brown is assiduously avoiding any commitments on the financial overhaul legislation, despite repeated efforts by top House and Senate lawmakers to win his vote.
The 43-member House and Senate conference committee met for two hours late yesterday afternoon to scrap a $19 billion tax, after Brown threatened to vote against the bill unless it was removed.
This morning, Brown continued to hold out, saying he would not make a decision on the bill for at least another week, after the Senate returns from a weeklong recess.
Of course, this is not about Brown making sure that he is happy with the bill (or, more precisely, Brown making sure that State Street Bank et al. are happy with the bill). It is about Brown making sure that everyone knows it’s all about Brown. Because if he said he’d vote for it, he wouldn’t be the center of attention anymore. And God knows we can’t have that!
Fortunately, at least on this bill, Brown’s 15 minutes are perilously close to expiring.
“I don’t know what his problem is,” Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said this morning. But, he added, “It also looks as if there are 60 votes without him.”
Two pieces of this whole thing are especially funny. First, the tax on mega-banks to which Brown was so opposed is more or less being replaced by money left over from the 2008 bank bailout. Not exactly a sustainable source of revenue going forward. And second,
[t]he Senate version of the bill, which Brown voted for, did not include a method of paying for the new regulations. Instead, it would have added to the federal deficit – a spending approach that Brown has opposed in other instances, most notably to vote against extending unemployment insurance.
This would all be quite funny, were it not for the fact that real people are really suffering as a result of Brown’s shenanigans on unemployment, and that there is actually quite a lot riding on getting a decent Wall Street bill through. But hey, as long as everyone knows how important Scott Brown is, I guess that’s all that matters.
… weren’t so tragic. Ezra:
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I don’t disagree with the content… just the premise of the title. I think Brown’s going to be around a long, long time… if he keeps playing things like this to look like he is “fighting” for Mass., no one will ever remember what the issues are come next election time… it is all the perception.
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p>Oh, and don’t forget that he’ll have $30m in the bank by the time the next election rolls around.
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p>Sen. Brown R-MA has been something that I think we should get used to it. Gross.
However, at this point I’m very happy about it. Whether or not he will be losing popularity as many on here hope will be up to those dumb voters.
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p>When do you think we will know if he’s here to stay or is a one-hit wonder? September 1, November 2… November 2012? How do his poll numbers look (although I think we should skip getting numbers from Research 2000 since so many Dems looked silly with views based on that organization. Rasmussen did a great job with Sen Brown prior to his landslide election victory so I’ll check them out.). I’d say if he’s still on top by the end of the summer then he’ll be riding high for a long time.
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p>Some sour numbers on Rasmussen about lots of stuff, none of it helpful to Dems…
Dems did not form views based on R2K. R2K’s numbers were in line with every other pollster except Ras. That’s why their ‘unusual’ underlying data went undetected for so long.
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p>Ras has a pronounced house effect, and his polling well before elections has a very different (and more extreme) house effect than his polling close to election day. This has been shown empirically. Just as with R2K, I’m not going to claim that Ras is cooking the books, but it is interesting how his polls which are farthest from conventional wisdom and expected polling are always at times when there is little to compare it to. If you wanted to help shape mojo, flooding the zone with house effect polls is how to do it, and that just so happens to be what Ras does.
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p>So look, I’m going to predict that Harry Reid wins by 15. But, ask me again in October, and I’m going to predict whatever pollster shows, plus 1 extra point for Reid. This way, if Reid wins I can show that I called it early… but if it’s close, my more recent prediction (given that some underlying factor surely changed between June and October) is still pretty accurate. This is what Ras is effectively doing.
…that we don’t care what the polls say?!
you don’t care when they say “your guy” isn’t doing well. Check out the comments about Sen Brown and the margin of error… and then go check previous polls with Deval. Favorable numbers for Deval translate into “good news” here at BMG. Don’t take my word, go read the comments of bloggers here. And wait till a poll comes out which is negative about Republicans and read the comments. I’m sure its a symptom of “tribalism”…
Absolutely I see polls showing good numbers for Obama or Deval as good news. I’m always glad when people agree with me, which I think is a basic human emotion. What I mean though (and I think you know this) is that polls that show bad news are not reason to change position and just go along with the popular will.
we all saw how well trying to be at the center of things worked out for Senators like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln…they had their approval ratings tank.
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p>Brown’s playing a dangerous game here, and one that will hurt him politically in the not-so-distant future.
… the attack ads write themselves: “Scott Brown voted for more pain for the unemployed … for big banks against the middle class” … etc.
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p>For the most part, they haven’t really begun in earnest.
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p>However, he is very handsome. And the local TV press love him. So does the Herald. Anyone who doesn’t think these things matter is kidding themselves.
a vote against is to continue to keep TARP funds available for big banks at the expense of reforming Wall Street. This is partially paid for by ending TARP and using that savings.
can we all pray that his receding hair line continues to recede – quickly.