Generally, he’s received no coverage at all of his votes selling out women and the middle class, while the press falls all over itself sending out his spin of himself as a “moderate” charting his own course. Yesterday we found Brown back in the limelight – the real hub of his career. He releases a statement suggesting his support for Planned Parenthood – a statement in complete contradiction to his voting record, and that may not even mean what he’s suggesting.
He may have gone a little too far this time.
First folks like Jed Lewison at Daily Kos (MA-Sen: Scott Brown says he's against the Planned Parenthood cuts that he voted for) called him out for his record of voting against Planned Parenthood funding. And then Joan Vennochi in today’s Globe zeroes in on him in (Brown being Brown). Joan, God bless her, put it front and center:
Confused? [Brown] wants you to be. It’s part of a pattern.
Brown was against the extension of jobless benefits until he voted for a budget that extended them.
He was against repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” until he voted for it.
He was for defunding Planned Parenthood, until he was against defunding “family planning” – which may or may not be the same thing as being against defunding Planned Parenthood.
You see, even his statement is still trying to pull the wool over our eyes. But this time, he may have been too cute by half, as even the conservative Weekly Standard is calling him out:
So does Brown really just oppose defunding Title X? Or does he also oppose defunding Planned Parenthood? Despite emails and phone calls over the past 24 hours requesting clarification, Senator Brown's spokesmen have not replied to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
What's going on here? One possibility is that Senator Brown and/or his staff simply confused the two proposals. Another possibility is that Brown and/or his staff deliberately issued a statement that the media would interpret as a comment on Planned Parenthood, while pro-lifers would see it as merely a statement on Title X.
You think? This is the game Brown plays, voting one way, and talking both ways. But the business of a Senator is to vote, and his votes show a good GOP soldier in D.C., doing the bidding of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. He’s smart enough to know that this is the way to get to the big money, and to pay homage to the GOP lobbyists and power brokers. He also knows that these votes won’t get him the attention he craves and the obfuscation he seeks, so he prances around in the spotlight to dazzle the press and fool the electorate with statements that directly contradict his voting record.
He’s being called out about it now, but the initial press – as seen in yesterday’s Globe – went exactly as he planned. Case in point:
Senator Scott Brown said yesterday a Republican plan to cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the women's health service provider, is too drastic and a compromise for partial funding should be reached. […]
Brown's break with GOP leadership on the issue was praised by NARAL Pro-Choice America.
There it is: a big and tasty “break with the party.” Perfectly timed, after other GOP Senators have already signaled that the same break. It does no harm to the party, and even his earlier hypocritical vote is framed with a nice dose of the Scott Brown party line. Brown soaks up the attention for a few days and gets some praise from NARAL, which is the only part most voters hear about and retain, and then he can go back to his votes for the GOP.
Scott Brown prefers to keep his record fuzzy, but it’s clear to me: pushing for extra bonus tax cuts for the rich that will explode the deficit, while pitting programs for the middle class against each other for a dwindling amount of funds. It's the typical GOP plan, but that's because he's a typical GOP politician.
This time, he may have been just a little too cute about it, but he got the first day stories he wanted. Will he get as much attention for the reality as he got for his spin?
the trouble is that this stuff works
Yet another example of NARAL’s failure to recognize that their political strategy is decades out of date and horrendously broken, which is why I don’t support them.
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p>NARAL acts in a way that was formed in an age of long term Democratic majorities in Congress, when a big component of politics was about engaging in the competition between various interest and issue groups in the Democratic coalition. In those days, forming a single issue organization made sense, and such an organization could bolster its strength by truly being about their issue, not about a broader movement. Part of that was attracting support across partisan, ideological, and organizational lines; it didn’t matter where the politicians you were dealing with fit in to the system, it mattered what they did about your one issue.
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p>That went out in the 80s. By the end of the 90s, a lot of groups had figured that out, and newer groups had formed who grew up in modern times in the first place. But NARAL never got it, as far as I can tell.
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p>Abortion and reproductive choice rights are going to rise or fall with the left. Allies on the right don’t help us, they hold us back. Scott Brown isn’t an ally, he’s just trying to look like one, but even honest ally-wannabes on the right can serve only to sap our strength. Supporting them weakens our ability to make any progress on something like abortion. It lends strength to right-wing anti-woman forces in our politics, and it’s not just metaphorical strength. It’s legislative, legal, organizational, structural. We stab ourselves when we are tempted by politicians aligned with the Republicans, even when those politicians seem to support us on this or that specific issue.
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p>Some organizations carved out their own transitions into the present. Organizations whose issues were actually broad sets of thematically connected things, who provide real services to people who need them, and whose support base can carry influence outside the left. But there aren’t many of these, and it takes a lot of skill to do it. Mostly, we need organizations who, whatever their primary motivation is, are working with the movement, not holding themselves apart from it. Working in alliance with Democrats, and at the same time working to support progressive elements trying to wield greater influence in the Democratic sphere.
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p>P.S.
Planned Parenthood happens to be one of those few organizations that I think figured out a successful transition of their own into today’s world, and part of that is that they’ve found ways to both ally with the progressive movement and Democrats while at the same time working outside the movement, and holding real support outside it. So whatever money I might’ve given to NARAL if they had a clue, I give to Planned Parenthood instead.
Who’s the better politician for Planned Parenthood – pro-choice Scott Brown or pro-life Steve Lynch?
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p>I also question your definition of ‘right’. You can have a pro-choice poltician that opposes illegal imigration, supports Second Amendment rights, works for right-to-work causes, etc. That would fit many libertarians, for example.
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p>NARAL isn’t dependent on government funding, which makes it more effective as it cannot be threatened with cuts.
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p>And as far as the sanctity of Planned Parenthood funding goes – they are merely a single agency which dispenses contraception and reproductive advice and services. There ARE others. So a vote against Planned Parenthood doesn’t stop all services, no matter what they say.
Don’t tell me what supposedly makes NARAL “more effective” in response to a comment in which I argued that NARAL is not effective, unless you want to show how you think it is effective. I don’t see any such thing.
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p>I said nothing about the sanctity of Planned Parenthood funding in this comment, nor did I refer to any votes for or against them. I don’t see how you think that relates to my comment.
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p>However, irrelevancy aside, your claim that they are “merely a single agency” and there are others seems like a rather delusional way of implying they’re not important, or that cutting Planned Parenthoods services won’t be a major harm to millions of people. I don’t know where you get that delusion, or whether you even really believe it.
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p>And even though I campaigned against Steve Lynch, and very much do not want him as our Senator, if it were he vs. Scott Brown running for the US Senate, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that a Lynch victory would be better for Planned Parenthood than a Brown victory.
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p>I don’t understand where you’re getting at with questioning my definition of left vs. right, but I think I made it clear that I wasn’t talking about grab-bags of issue positions, I was talking about broad movements.