With so much attention lately focused on Elizabeth Warren, it’s kind of amazing how bad of a week Scott Brown has had:
– Scott Brown’s vote this week against student loans is pretty damning to his “Regular Guy” image and is likely to stay around to haunt him for a while. Regular guys worry about how much more debt their kids have to take on as of July 1. Not Brown.
– Brown was twice called out by the Boston Globe for raising such huge amounts of money from New York’s financial sector. That will be an issue throughout the campaign. These are not “regular guy” contributors, but Wall Street fat cats.
– The Massachusetts Democratic state party video documents his relationship with this crowd. It is fittingly titled with the Stevie Wonder song it is set to, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.”
– Scott Brown made a lot of hay out of making a half-court basketball shot, but it turned out it took him five tries and that the video led to an ethics complaint against his use of senate staff resources for his political campaign as reported in Politico.
– People have also been watching more than his hoop shots. The revelation on the Huffington Post that he paid Laura Bush’s ghost writer more than $100,000 for writing the book he took in more than $1 million for.
– President Obama’s new support for gay marriage spotlighted Brown’s refusal to support it and past opposition to it. This brings back all the Brown baggage as reported in Time. It reminds us “Brown called then state Senator Cheryl Jacques’ decision to have children with her female partner as “not normal” and referred to her parenting as “alleged family responsibilities.” People are again talking about how he refused to take part with the entire rest of the Massachusetts Delegation in the “It Gets Better” anti gay bullying campaign. Could not even be bi-partisan against bullying?
– Brown began to cross a pretty clear line in his continued over the top attacks on Elizabeth Warren rand was accused by one media outlet of morphing into a birther. Of course, this is not the first time he’s been linked to the birther movement. He tried it out on his now “good buddy” President Obama as caught in AlterNet.
– Finally, another poll, this one done by Republican pollster, again shows the race a dead heat. – troubling news for such a well-known incumbent.
David says
Brown’s questioning the circumstances of Obama’s birth was not caught by AlterNet. It was caught by us, right here at BMG! You’ll note that AlterNet’s post links back to this one.
lynne says
Getting all out ahead of things. Stop it! 😉
nopolitician says
Brown is beating the pants off Warren in the press game. The Springfield Republican is printing Brown’s press releases as factual stories.
Case in point, there were two articles put out yesterday, an AP article titled “Elizabeth Warren didn’t claim minority status on law school application, records show”, and one written by a political correspondent titled “Elizabeth Warren listed as minority in University of Pennsylvania report”. Which one is the headline today? The latter. Even the former story, while exonerating her of any claims that Brown has made, still contains quotes like “Brown has said serious questions have been raised about Warren’s claims to Native American ancestry “, and another article yesterday titled “Massachusetts GOP launches web video hitting Elizabeth Warren over Native American controversy” continues to push the meme that Warren may not be of Native American Heritage because the actual document that shows it was not found.
This campaign smacks of Karl Rove, making us believe that John Kerry was a traitor instead of a decorated war hero.
lynne says
In the Herald maybe. But I don’t see this (at least yet) really reaching the electorate. The indys and Dem-leaners, I think, seem to me to view this as meh. As in, “meh, why am I supposed to care about this?”
It’s a Republican dog whistle in a state where Republican dog whistles don’t really register. We just don’t have many Republican dogs around here. Romney made sure to lose that constituency!
If this were North Carolina, these attacks might have legs. As it is, I hear a collective *yawn* from the casual voters. They aren’t even paying attention yet.
nopolitician says
I know that people who comment on newspaper forums are typically right wing, but here is a sampling of the comments from yesterday’s Republican article:
See what is happening? People don’t comprehend the articles. They mostly read the headlines. So people now believe that Warren is not Native American, and that she was an affirmative action hire – which is the exact opposite of the truth. That is the Rovian part, to make people believe the opposite of reality.
mski011 says
However, I don’t necessarily think it is fatal. Warren’s campaign is starting to write more in-depth press releases and that will over the long-haul blunt the Brown releases. I still think Brown is jumping the shark on the heritage story. The Republican, as influential as it may be has been hemorrhaging respect for years in these parts and frankly I don’t think their crummy coverage on this front is changing any minds. And the comments? Well, that is the definition of faceless cowardice. It is a lot easier to vent salacious invective if nobody knows who you are and there are said to be people who post under multiple names because they’re such losers, I mean really believe their point!
petr says
I don’t know about you, but Karl Rove never made me believe anything… and Kerry won Massachusetts (which is what we are discussing here) which might indicate a certain immunity.
Scott Brown is already pulling out all the stops. His victory in 2010 was a fluke and he knows it.
Bob Neer says
Wikipedia explains Tremadota: