Scott Walker Disputes Ronald Reagan's Admonitions Against Starting A GOP War Against Women

Now that the Republican primary is over, Scott Brown is trying to present himself to New Hampshire voters as more moderate and more mainstream than his record shows he is— particularly on issues important to women voters (and to men who like and respect women). Brown has been lying, claiming he has always supported women having the ability to get contraception easily. He recently said he has supported that "since I was 18 years old." In light of his anti-women voting record from he was a senator from Massachusetts, Politifact rates Brown’s claims “mostly false.” And even a far more radical right-wing Republican, Wisconsin Governor Rick Scott, has tried to close the gaping gender gap by making the absurd claim— in an ad no less— that he’s stayed out of women’s health care decisions. The ad from NARAL Pro-Choice at the bottom, which will start running in the Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and LaCrosse/Eau Claire media markets tomorrow is the response to his dishonesty.

The most current polling shows his neck and neck with Democrat Mary Burke, Burke leading by one point. Among women, Burke leads by 10 points. Most Wisconsin women know how toxic Walker’s agenda has been for them and for their families. In Elizabeth Warren’s words, “No governor has done more to hurt working families than Scott Walker. He started by gutting Wisconsin's labor unions— the very organizations that built America's middle class and that would fight back hardest against his radical agenda. When he succeeded, he cut $800 million from the state's education budget, starving schools and laying off teachers. Then he rejected federal funding under the Affordable Care Act, leaving tens of thousands of people shut out of the health care system…This week, I'm headed to Wisconsin to endorse Mary Burke, the smart, tough, and experienced Democratic nominee for Governor of Wisconsin.” She continued: 

For a long time, the political pundits said Scott Walker couldn't be beat. There has been plenty of money flowing in from powerful interests, and they said it would be just too much to overcome— don't even try.

What did Mary take from that? That she needed to fight hard and build one of the best grassroots teams in the country to go door to door, person to person, to talk about why this campaign is so important for Wisconsin families.

That's what she did, and here's what she found: the people of Wisconsin were ready to fight back, too. Now the race is officially a tossup. In every single poll conducted in September, Scott Walker and Mary Burke were virtually tied.

And there's one more issue Mary has taken on: she is not afraid to talk about how Scott Walker's record shows he's just another Republican acting like it's 1954, not 2014.

This is a governor who defunded Planned Parenthood, repealed equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, and even removed the requirement for public schools to teach comprehensive sex ed.

And since we're talking about Wisconsin, let's listen to a few words from the most influential thinker and spokesperson of American conservatism in our lifetimes, Paul Ryan's patron saint:



Being anti-Choice— and generally anti-women— has long been a marker go belonging to the right-wing tribe. It’s sometimes been a difficult one for the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party to deal with. Many conservatives who don’t care about anything but evading taxes are confused by the Republican Party’s relentless war on women by fanatics like Walker. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein looked at the verbal gymnastics Ronald Reagan had to perform to keep from alienating the crazed anti-Choice fanatics in his party.

In 1967, while governor of California, Reagan signed the most liberal abortion law in the country. He defended it, in a very different way than Ayn Rand would, by claiming that “[i]n our Judeo-Christian religion, we recognize the right to take life in defense of our own. Therefore an abortion is justified when it is done in self-defense. My belief is that a woman has the right to protect her own life and health against even her own unborn child. I believe also that just as she has the right to defend herself against rape she should not be made to bear a child resulting from the violation of her person and therefore abortion is an act of self-defense.”

Scott Walker and the rest of the kook on the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party find Reagan’s ideas on this abhorrent and would drum him out of their tribe party today as a RINO.

Keep yer clothes on, Scott Brown -- Cosmo's now "picking brains over brawn"

Isn't it just like us to be trotting out -- yet again -- these ancient beefcake pictures? Sure, but ask yourself whether they aren't still the most noteworthy thing about our Scott.

by Ken

Before we get to the, er, meat of this story, could we pause for a bit of, er, dressing? Namely, Cosmo is now doing political endorsements? Huh?

It might be useful here to have some political strategists to poll on the expected impact of a Cosmo endorsement. I'm not suggesting that Cosmo readers don't vote. I bet a lot of them do. Or at least as high a precentage as that of non-Cosmo readers. Not much of a standard, I admit, but it's the one we seem to be stuck with here in the U.S.A. No, my question is whether those readers are apt to be influenced by the magazine's endorsements. If I sound skeptical, I am.

On the other hand, given Scott Brown's particular history, being snubbed by Cosmo in his challenge to NH Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, makes for irresistibly merry copy. HuffPost's headline is "Cosmo Endorses Jeanne Shaheen Over Its Former Centerfold"; USA Today's, "'Cosmo' nixes former centerfold Scott Brown for Jeanne Shaheen." And so on and on, ad -- I'm guessing -- infinitum. As far as I know, though, our own head is the only one that has tackled the urgent issue of making sure Scott keeps his clothes on.

The head on the "In the Loop" item on washingtonpost.com is "Worth a look, not a vote?":

To all the young aspiring politicians pondering the age-old question “Should I pose nude in an international women’s magazine?”: Yes, you can still have a career afterward. No, the editors cannot guarantee their support when you run for office three decades later.

Scott Brown, the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts who is hoping to return to Capitol Hill via New Hampshire, famously appeared as the centerfold in Cosmopolitan in 1982. Brown, then a 22-year-old law student at Boston College, won the magazine’s “America’s Sexiest Man” contest.

But the people at Cosmo were far more impressed with Brown’s looks back then than they are with his politics now. On Tuesday, the editors announced the magazine’s endorsement of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the incumbent Brown is challenging in a tough race. (In addition to sex tips and fashion no-nos, Cosmo started doing political endorsements for the 2014 midterms.)

“And while we wish we could support the man who once posed nude in our pages, his policy positions just aren’t as solid as his abs were in the ’80s,” the editors write. They go on to explain their support for Shaheen, noting her stances on abortion, equal pay and other issues of women’s rights.

“Scott Brown may have been Cosmopolitan’s ‘sexiest man’ in 1982, but in 2014, we’re picking brains over brawn — and that’s Jeanne Shaheen,” they conclude.

Now, I like to think I yield to no one in my appreciation of hotness, and our Scott was pretty hot for a 50-something -- in fact, arguably hotter than he looked back in 1982 -- when, in January 2011, he got Massachusetts voters to making him the elected successor to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. And if he hadn't been pretty hot, I don't think there's any chance he could have pulled it off. But I never understood why it was an issue then. Did voters imagine he was going to have sex with them?

Gosh, was that really only January 2011? It seems so long ago -- long enough that Massachusetts voters have already had and exercised their chance to express second thoughts. In fairness, he still got 46.3 percent of the vote, but now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren got the remaining 53.7 percent. Jeanne Shaheen isn't Elizabeth Warren, but then, the 2014 Scott Brown isn't the 2011 Scott Brown, even apart from his deft magic-carpet ride to New Hampshire. Then again, if New Hampshire voters want a dullard, go-along Republican senator, that's their choice.

Scott just has to hope Cosmo doesn't have a lot of pull with NH voters.

#

Too Early To Predict A Scott Brown Wipeout In New Hampshire?

At this point, no one even knows for sure that opportunistic Massachusetts carpetbagger Scott Brown will actually be the candidate New Hampshire Republicans decide to run against popular Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Former Senator Robert Smith, an underdog and crackpot who's running to the right of Brown, appears stronger with the GOP base than anyone had thought-- despite the endorsements Brown has trotted out from the mistrusted GOP Establishment (Romney, Ayotte, Sununu. Merrill…). Most polls of Republican voters show "undecided" in the top slot. That said, let's go along with conventional wisdom and assume that Brown makes it through the primary-- on which he hasn't spent one dime to the $119,385 Smith has spent and the $51,461 Karen Testerman has spent. (Testerman dropped her bid on June 13 and endorsed Smith: "I am going to step aside and let Bob Smith be the only name on the Republican primary ballot that is a conservative.")

Yesterday's Concord Monitor was trumpeting the new WMUR Granite State poll (more on the unreliability of that operation below) that shows Shaheen kicking Brown's butt from Seabrook to Pittsburg.

Shaheen holds a comfortable lead against all of her Republican challengers, a new WMUR Granite State Poll released tonight shows. Her 12-point lead over Scott Brown, the likely Republican nominee, is double what it was in April when Brown made his candidacy official. The margin of error is 4.3 percent.

…Fifty-seven percent of people surveyed have a favorable opinion of Shaheen’s job performance, which is near the high end of her approval ratings since she was elected in 2007. Meanwhile, all of her opponents have net negative ratings, meaning more people have an unfavorable view of them than a favorable one. Overall, the poll shows Shaheen in a position to win a second term. Many voters, however, pay little attention to politics in the summer and only 17 percent of people surveyed said they have definitely decided who they will vote for in November.

...If the election were held today, Brown would take 38 percent of the vote compared to Shaheen’s 50. In comparison, she leads Smith 47 to 34 percent and Rubens 56 to 30 percent. Smith called on Rubens to drop out of the race earlier this week and these poll results will likely only strengthen those calls.

When it comes to favorability, 31 percent of people like Brown while 40 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him, with a margin of error of 3.8 percent. Only 18 percent of people see Smith favorably while 55 percent don’t know enough about him to say. Rubens, who has been campaigning the longest, has a 10 percent approval rating with 77 percent of voters not knowing enough to say.

Caveats. First of all, as of the last FEC reporting deadline, Shaheen had raised $7,378,748 and spent an astronomical $3,037,316-- and with no primary opponent, all bolstering herself against Brown. She had $4,351,281 cash-on-hand, which has probably grown appreciably since then. Brown had only raised $274,728 and hadn't spent a dime of it. Smith raised $217,854 and spent, with Brown in his sights, $119,385. Keep in mind, of course, that just two years ago Brown's status as Wall Street's favorite senator allowed him to spend $35,058,354 in a futile effort to keep his seat in Massachusetts. Wall Street will be there for him again-- although, as of now, outside groups have spent $1,146,716 attacking Brown and Republican outside groups have only spent $70,222 helping Brown and $91,072 attacking Shaheen. If Brown wins the September 9 primary, the big Wall Street and right-wing cash will start flowing into New Hampshire. (Brown has refused to make the same deal-- the People's Pledge-- with Shaheen to keep outside money out of the race that he made with Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts.)

Caveat #2: As Nate Cohn pointed out in yesterday's NY Times polling isn't worth much this far out before the midterms. Polling averages are poisoned by untrustworthy partisan outfits like Rasmussen which aren't really polling firms as much as propaganda extensions of the political parties who whomever else with an agenda is paying them. And as Daily Kos pointed out, polling from WMUR has to be taken with-- at best-- a grain of salt. They were looking at the bizarre results from NH-01 in the same polling we referred to above for the Senate race.

I think I'm finally ready to give up on UNH's polling once and for all. Check out their latest numbers from New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District. Starting in October of last year, Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter had a 16-point lead on her likeliest GOP opponent, ex-Rep. Frank Guinta. Then in January, Guinta went up 6, followed by Shea-Porter going up 9 in April, and now Guinta leaping back out in front by 3. Five polls, four lead changes, and often with huge shifts-- just look at this crazy chart. Seriously, wtf?

"Gotcha, bitch!" screamed Scott Brown at NH Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Only the cannonball landed on his own foot, which happened to be in his mouth at the time

"Ooh, gotcha!" apparently thought once and would-be-future Sen. Scott Brown. "Bitch'll never know what hit her!" Maybe, maybe not.

by Ken

Normally the modern blood sport of "gotcha" politics thrives on ignorance and stupidity, a perfect match for the virtually achieved right-wing dream of an electorate -- and a snoozemedia gang -- dominated by people with absolute-zero functional IQs (fIQs). Every now and then, though, this dream of a world where political intercourse is squeezed free of any intelligence quotient encounters a hiccup.

It turns out that in America in the year 2014, it may after all be possible to be too stupid. Today's posterboy is former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who of course is currently campaigning to be New Hampshire Sen. Scott Brown. And man, did the Scottster ever think he had his eventual general-election opponent, NH Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, set up for one of those "Gotcha!"s that constitute the intellectual core of modern-day policy-making. Except, well, except for that old problem of not having a clue WTF he was talking about.

The Washington Post's In the Loop team of Al Kamen and Colby Itkowitz reports:

Mass., N.H., whatever . . .

Scott Brown’s New Hampshire Senate campaign sent a news release Wednesday questioning why Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) wasn’t appearing with President Obama while he was “in town.”

But Obama was in Worcester, Mass., about 50 miles from the New Hampshire border. The president will then visit Boston to raise money for Senate Democrats.

Brown’s hometown is Wakefield, Mass. And for one term, he served the state as its U.S. senator. He moved to neighboring New Hampshire to challenge Shaheen.

When asked what constitutes being “in town,” Brown campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Guyton said the statement itself clarified that Obama was “in New England.” Guyton reiterated that Shaheen “wasn’t there, even though the money raised at the event will be used to prop up her race.”

The Senate is in session and had votes scheduled on a health-care bill for veterans and student-loan legislation. Shaheen also attended the state delegation’s fifth annual New Hampshire reception on Capitol Hill in the evening.

Pro-tip for the Brown camp: When your aim is to endear yourself to a new constituency, suggesting that your old and new states are one and the same (it’s all New England, we guess) may not be politically wise.

Gotcha! (At least within the standard right-wing margin of error of 100 percent.)

#

Who Does Scott Brown Want To See Suffer?

There's a reason Elizabeth Warren is concerned that Scott Brown is trying to make a comeback-- no matter how far fetched by running against centrist Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, who is up in every single poll so far. Warren's antipathy for Brown goes back far before she ran against him and defeated him when he was still claiming to be from Massachusetts.

In her new book, A Fighting Chance, Warren gives the reader a fascinating behind the curtain look at the battle for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was nearly derailed by Brown's surprise election.

Even before Brown's triumph at the polls against Martha Coakley, when Warren was told that the Senate was going to quietly kill the entire project, she showed what she is made of and why so many people want to see her run for president. That not enough people have her attitude, sums up nicely what is wrong among our political elite. "The way I saw it," she wrote, "we had nothing to lose. I didn't want a job in the Capitol, so what did I care if I ticked off a lot of people in Washington? This was our last chance to get this agency into law. If we lost now, we lost forever.

The Senate did not want a tough vote on this issue. Dan explained what that meant: the consumer agency was popular, and, to a lot of senators, a vote on the new agency meant having to choose between angering the public and angering the banks-- and they didn't want to anger either. They preferred a quiet and slightly mysterious death.

…[A] newly energized Republican Party [had] the leverage to block-- or at least rewrite-- legislation they did not like. To those of us fighting for the consumer agency, it looked like another nail in the coffin…The Democrats had lost their sixty-seat majority in January, and now the bill needed the support of Massachusetts' newest senator, Republican Scott Brown. Suddently the senator found himself sitting in the catbird seat. Wasting no time, he threatened to hold up the financial bill unless the Democrats agreed to reopen the nearly completed package to add one more provision: a financial break for the big banks.

Ever since the United States began writing rules for financial institutions, the banks have always paid the costs of regulation. The price tag for enforcing the new bank reforms was estimated to be about 19 billion, and the current version of the reform bill specifically said that the biggest financial institutions would pay for it.

Now Senator Brown threatened to hold up the bill unless that provision was changed. He insisted that the taxpayers, not the bill banks, pick up the tab. Barney Frank was furious, but he didn't have much choice: this last change was the price of making financial reform a reality. The deal was cut, the final bill was passed by both the House and the Senate, and the legislation was sent to the president for his signature.

Why would Scott Brown screw over the taxpayers to save the crooked banks, who had just nearly destroyed the entire economy-- and certainly wrecks the lives of millions of people? A better question might be to ask why the Financial Sector gave more campaign cash to Scott Brown last cycle than to any other member of Congress. Here's a graphic from OpenSecrets.org showing the half dozen top recipients of legalized bribery from the financial sector for 2012.

In the video below, Chris Hayes asks, Scott Hagerstrom, the Koch brothers top Michigan political operative, "Who do you want to see suffer?" That's an easy question for Republicans like Hagerstrom and Scott Brown. They want to see ordinary working families suffer… a lot.

Scott Brown Wants To Change New Hampshire-- "Live Free And Die"-- And Thomas Ravenel Wants To Do Something Weird In South Carolina

Last night, Rachel Maddow's opening segment was the Scott Brown Story (above). It's an excellent piece of reportage and I recommend it. Thursday he makes his "official" declaration of candidacy to run for Senate (in New Hampshire). There are 4 other Republicans running, including an ex-New Hampshire 2-term U.S. Senator, Bob Smith. He might find it awkward using the carpetbagger charge against Brown because after he was ousted by John Sununu is the 2002 primary he moved to Florida (and ran for Senate there, unsuccessfully, in 2004 and 2010). But, awkward or not, he'll use it. And he won't be the only one. Mark Hounsell, Republican former assistant leader of the New Hampshire state Senate, pounded him as a shameless carpetbagger in the Conway Daily Sun and said Brown is a dunce to ignore the primary and assume he's the candidate against Shaheen.

To me, either Bob Smith, or Jim Rubens are much more preferable than the slick looking, silver tongued, golden boy from the flatlands.


Scott Brown is looking to the November general elections and not considering the GOP primary at all.  The John H. Sununu camp and his puppet, GOP Chairman Jennifer Horn, are doing all they can to see to it that Brown gets that nomination. Political hucksters, such as Karl Rove, are raising huge amounts of money for Brown’s campaign. Yet, they are forgetting one thing.  The GOP primary voters favor conservatives. Case in point.  the recent Executive District  One GOP primary.  The NHGOP establishment all lined up behind the moderate Chris Boothby and were floored when the conservative Joe Kenney prevailed.  That is real good evidence that in spite of everything else the independence of the New Hampshire voter cannot be bought.  Scott Brown will be a bright and short-lived Roman Candle, in the mold of Texas Governor and short-lived presidential candidate, Rick Perry. Rubens will split the moderate vote from Brown and Bob Smith will eek out a victory and secure the Republican nomination.


Regardless, of where they may fall philosophically on the political spectrum of left or right, both Bob Smith and Jim Rubens have something that Scott Brown lacks.  That is New Hampshire roots and New Hampshire experience.  New Hampshire voters will not elect a “Johnny come lately”  who will say, or do anything in order to achieve what he wants. When Brown loses his bid to become a Senator from New Hampshire where will he move next?  Perhaps he will pack his carpetbag and shamelessly move to Maine?

Yesterday, Joshua Miller interviewed Elizabeth Warren for the Boston Globe about Brown's chances against Shaheen. “Jeanne is tough, she is independent, and she is strong," she told him. "I think Scott Brown is going to have his hands full.” She also predicted Shaheen, who was New Hampshire's popular governor from 1997 until 2003, will win another term. Shaheen is the first woman in U.S. history to have been elected as both a governor and senator.

Recent polling backs up Warren's prediction. PPP reported that 40% of New Hampshire voters already have an unfavorable opinion of Brown (and only 34% have a favorable opinion of him). In a head-to-head match-up she beat him 46-43%.

Speaking of loser Republicans running for the U.S. Senate, last night, after his incredibly dysfunctional weekly appearance on BRAVO's sit com/reality show Southern Charm, South Carolina's Republican former state Treasurer, Thomas Ravenel, announced that he's a candidate for Lindsey Graham's Senate seat. He was forced to resign when he was caught selling cocaine and sentenced to prison. He's out of prison now, a BRAVO star, an embarrassment to Charleston and someone who could take away enough votes from Lindsey Graham in the general election to see progressive Democrat Jay Stamper become South Carolina's senator. Imagine!

Scott Brown Predicts He'll Die In Massachusetts-- Just As His Sleazy Political Career Did

A few days ago, Elizabeth Warren sent out a note to her followers warning that Scott Brown, "Wall Street's favorite senator," was back for another try… this time in New Hampshire. When Warren beat Brown in 2012, he managed to win 46% of the vote and spend $35,058,354 to achieve that. Far right hate groups like America 360 Committee, Americans forTax Reform, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Rove's Crossroads GPS poured another $2,192,513 in negative ads into the race smearing Warren. Wall Street gave more money to Brown that to any other Member of Congress-- more than a million dollars more even to Speaker Boehner! This chart shows what the financial industry crooks shelled out to their favorite shills in the 2012 cycle:

The latest polling of New Hampshire voters, doesn't bode well for Brown as he announces his "exploratory" committee. A Suffolk/Herald poll last week showed him losing to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen 52-39%. On top of that, only a third of New Hampshire voters have a favorable impression of Brown and 42% say they have a negative impression. When asked for a word of phrase that first comes to mind when Scott Brown's name is brought up the half dozen most frequent were “Carpet bagger/interloper” (10.88%), “Massachusetts” (6.75%), “Untrustworthy/dishonest” (6.63%), “Competent” (4.13%), “Wishy-washy/flip-flops/uncertain” (3.50%), and “Opportunist” (3.38%).

I was finishing high school when Bobby Kennedy, someone well-associated with Massachusetts, decided to leave his job as Attorney General and take on New York Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating. I got a job at his Manhattan campaign headquarters as the elevator operator. I saw him and his top aides every day and I was happy when he ousted Keating 3,823,749 (53.5%) to 3,104,056 (43.4%). Keating, a right-of-center "moderate," had one major attack: carpetbagger, carpetbagger, carpetbagger. New Yorkers, a cosmopolitan bunch to begin with, bought Kennedy;s response: "If the senator of the state of New York is going be selected on who's lived here the longest, then I think people are going vote for my opponent. If it's going be selected on who's got the best New York accent, then I think I'm probably out too. But I think if it's going be selected on the basis of who can make the best United States senator, I think I'm still in the contest."

In 2000, Hillary Clinton, identified with Illinois and Arkansas, ran for the open New York State senate seat against Long Island Congressman (and crooked Wall Street favorite) Rick Lazio. She kicked his ass 3,747,310 (55.27%) to 2,915,730 (43.01%). She ran for reelection 6 years later and enjoyed a two-to-one landslide victory over the Republican mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, 3,008,428 (67%) to 1,392,189 (31%).

Over the weekend, the Christian Science Monitor asked if Brown can do the same thing in New Hampshire.

On Friday, Brown noted that his well-traveled pickup-- now adorned with “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire license plates-- was approaching 300,000 miles.

He’ll need it if he’s too overcome any perception that he’s a newcomer to the Granite State. (He moved to his family’s vacation home there last summer and registered as a New Hampshire voter in December.)

“New Hampshire is a traditional retail politics state,” Matt Mowers, executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, told the Globe. “The voters here want to hear you talk two or three times, not just once. People are much more interested in where you stand on issues and how you’ll help them.”

Like virtually every Republican running for election or re-election, Brown is zeroing in on the Affordable Care Act as his prime target.

“If we don’t like Obamacare, we can get rid of it. Period,” Brown said in his speech Friday at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference in Nashua. “A big political wave is about to break in America, and the Obamacare Democrats are on the wrong side of that wave.”

Outside influence is likely to be a big issue in New Hampshire’s senatorial race.

American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s super PAC, is about to launch $600,000 in attack ads against Shaheen.

“Scott Brown is for Scott Brown and the powerful interests that back him, not New Hampshire,” New Hampshire Democrats said in a statement. “New Hampshire isn’t going to let Scott Brown and his big oil buddies like the Koch brothers buy themselves a Senate seat.”

On Saturday, Shaheen sent a letter to Brown asking him to sign the "People's Pledge," the same thing he agreed to while running against Warren two years ago.

“I have signed and attached two copies of an agreement with the exact same terms for the New Hampshire 2014 Senate race,” Shaheen wrote. "I hope you will join me in once again committing to the same People’s Pledge you signed in Massachusetts and limiting the influence of outside groups in New Hampshire this year."

Brown quickly knocked back that idea, calling it “hypocritical and self-serving.”

…Brown’s nomination-- assuming he moves beyond his exploratory effort to official candidacy-- is no slam dunk.

Former US Sen. Bob Smith, former state Sen. Jim Rubens, and conservative activist Karen Testerman, have announced for the seat as Republicans.

Smith says he and the other two declared candidates "are being ignored by the establishment.”

"This is really something,” he told the New Hampshire Union Leader. “To have a Massachusetts liberal being promoted, actually being pushed, by the powers in Washington and the establishment here in New Hampshire to run against three people who have been on the ground here for decades is really pretty bizarre.”

Scott Brown only runs against women-- and against women's equality

Hey, Scott Brown, keep your shirt on -- unless you're thinking of . . .

by Ken

"It's the middle of winter," writes Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi ("Don't dismiss Scott Brown's chance in N.H."). "Scott Brown has his shirt off, and it can only mean one thing. He’s running for US Senate in New Hampshire."

That’s the way the political press read the picture of a bare-chested Brown taking part in the Granite State’s 15th annual Penguin Plunge. Whether Brown was showing off his body or just avoiding the embarrassment of wearing his team’s official T-shirt -- "Buckley’s Frozen Seamen" -- his shirtless-ness during a charity plunge to benefit the Special Olympics was seen as a signal of intent to run against Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.

The former senator from Massachusetts, who recently sold his Wrentham home and moved full-time to New Hampshire, has yet to announce his plans. But Democrats are nervous, and they should be.

Shaheen is vulnerable; a recent poll showed her tied with Brown at 44 percent. To ward him off, a pro-environmental group is launching a $220,000 ad buy, Politico reported. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is raising money for Shaheen and warning Brown that her colleague will be hard to beat.

A recent tweet of Brown-generated gibberish triggered snide recollections of Brown’s "Bqhatevwr" tweet from a year ago, and photos from his law school modeling days are being resurrected, to undercut his credibility.

Chortle away. If Brown gets into the race, it’s a big political story with potentially serious consequences for Democrats anxious to retain control of the US Senate.

Now, of course, Scott B, the candidate from Cosmo, has to worry about his little problem with the use made by Newsmax of the e-mail list he rented them: sending out an article called "5 Signs You'll Get Alzheimer's Disease."

Joan V seems to think the NH race will be a referendum on Obamacare, where Senator Shaheen has vulnerability and No-Shirt Scott can claim to have committed to voting "no" when he beat Martha Coakley for Sen. Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Maybe No-Shirt Scott will have an easier time running in more conservative NH than he did trying to fend off now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren in his old home state. And maybe No-Shirt's old nemesis Senator Warrren, campaigning alongside Senator Shaheen, can tip the women's vote the senator's way.

I don't know about this stuff. Who am I, Politico? "The Fix"? I just want to offer Scott one thought: Keep your damned shirt on! Honestly, have you looked at those latest shirtless pix? Hmm, how to put this? You're not as young as you used to be. In fact, the No-Shirt Scott of 2014 rather puts me in mind of -- well, another frequently shirtless pol.

YOU DON'T SUPPOSE NO-SHIRT SCOTT'S
REALLY SETTING HIS SIGHTS ELSEWHERE?

Like maybe a state, um, even more conservative politically than New Hampshire?

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

SOCHI HOTEL GUESTS COMPLAIN ABOUT
TOPLESS PORTRAITS OF PUTIN IN ROOMS

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ



SOCHI (The Borowitz Report)—With the Olympics underway, hundreds of visitors to Sochi are complaining that they checked into expensive hotel rooms only to find them decorated with seminude portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The portraits, showing Mr. Putin shirtless and riding a variety of mammals, adorn the walls of virtually every hotel room constructed especially for the Olympics and were created at a cost of over two million dollars, Olympic officials said.

Tracy Klugian, who travelled from Ohio with his wife to attend the Sochi Games, said that he was appalled to find his hotel room dominated by a gigantic portrait of a shirtless Putin riding what appears to be a bear.

Said Mr. Klugian, “I did not travel thousands of miles just to be grossed out.”

For his part, President Putin has been dismissive of the complaints, today calling the hotel guests “babies who cry.”

“These people who are complaining about what is on their walls should be grateful,” he said. “At least they got one of the hotel rooms with walls.”

I don't know if there's a Russian version of Politico or "The Fix" (sometimes I think Politico and "The Fix" are the Russian versions of Politico and "The Fix"), but they'd know the pols who are positioning themselves to pounce if and when No-Short Volodya either steps aside or dies. (And he does have to do one or the other eventually, doesn't he?) Why, Senator Warren might even kick in a few rubles for his campaign.


AT ONE POINT WE REALLY DO HAVE TO DRAW
THE LINE ON THIS EPIDEMIC OF SHIRTLESSNESS

I've been meaning to comment on the signal sent the other day the master of "The Fix," Chris Cillizza, to NJ Gov. Kris KrispyKreme in a post called "How Chris Christie is screwing this up." Chris explains that until now he's "generally thought that Chris Christie has handled himself well" during the Bridgegate dust-up. And he continued to think so most of the way through the memo entitled "5 things You Should Know About the Bombshell That's Not a Bombshell" issued by Team Christie over the weekend. Where DC Chris jumped off the bandwagon of NJ Kris was the elaborate sliming of poor David Wildstein.

"In David Wildstein's past, people and newspaper accounts have described him as 'tumultuous' and someone who 'made moves that were not productive.' " As evidence, the memo notes that Wildstein sued over a local school board election when he was 16, was publicly accused of deceptive behavior by his high school social studies teacher and, worst of all, "was an anonymous blogger known as Wally Edge." (I mean, blogs are bad enough. But an anonymous one? There is a special circle of hell for those people.)

First of all, high school? Seriously? I mean, this is what I looked like in high school — and if the things I did then were used as evidence of the relative worth of my current character, let's just say I wouldn't be too happy. Second, if Christie thought these high school foibles were so disqualifying, why did he bring Wildstein into his administration — as director of interstate capital projects (um, what?) at the Port Authority. If Christie knew Wildstein was such a bad guy dating all the way back to high school — Christie said of the two mens' shared high school experience: "You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don't know what David was doing during that period of time" — it seems implausible that he would have considered him for a well-paying job within his own administration.

Take one big step backward. Why, regardless of the reasons, is Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and a serious candidate for president in two years, picking on what one of his appointees did in high school? And that question becomes even more perplexing when you consider that Christie is trying to beat back the idea that he is a bully and fostered that sort of bullying mentality in his administration.

Look, we get why Christie put this memo out. He wanted to slam the Times for making a big deal out of something he and his team don't believe is that big a deal. And he wants to make sure his friends and allies as well as the media and the donor community know that Wildstein is desperately looking for a way out of his role in Bridge-gate. But there's a far better way to do that. How about releasing a statement that says "David Wildstein is making allegations about me and my administration that are simply not true. He is doing so to save himself — simple and plain." Instead, Christie put out a memo savaging Wildstein for things that happened three decades ago and, to be frank, don't even seem like all that big of a deal.

It reeks of some combination of panic and vendetta-settling — neither of which do Christie any good in getting out of his current morass.

Well, of course I expect Governor KrispyKreme to lie and slime wherever there's an opening for lying or sliming. It's who he is. The part that got my attention, though, was where the governor strolls down Memory Lane and recalls that while this strange young Wildstein person was behaving like a total nutbag, he himself "was the class president and athlete."

OMG, are we now to witness NJ Fats transforming himself into (gasp) an athlete? I say that Homeland Security needs to issue an alert for all law-enforcement officials -- federal, state, and local -- to keep their eyes rivete on the Fatman, and if he so much goes for a button on his shirt, to open fire and put the beast down. A shirtless Krispyman would mean we're all in hell and there's no getting out.

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Free Passes! Free Passes! Getcha Free Passes To An Easy Reelection!

I don't suppose Lizard Man conferred with Elizabeth Warren before he offered a free pass to reelection to Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown. But the reptilian Schumer was boasting to Isaac Chotiner for an interview in the New Republic that that is exactly what he did in 2012. Chotiner establishes right up from that "[i]deologically, it’s not easy to categorize Schumer. He is a populist champion of the middle class who is also a protector and patron of Wall Street, from which he has raised scads of money."

Schumer went to high school with Ken and I (James Madiosn in Brooklyn). Even back then, it was all about Schumer… everything, always. In this particular interview even Elizabeth Warren was all about Schumer!

You know I helped persuade her to run. There is a good little story. [Looks to aide] I can tell this. I went to Scott Brown and said, “If you give us the sixtieth vote for the Citizens United rollback, we won’t go after you.” I spent a lot of time lobbying him, and met some of his friends and had them lobby him. He said yes. Then he said no. So I wanted to recruit the strongest candidate against him, and I thought that was Elizabeth Warren… So, Elizabeth. I got to know her. And I believe in a broad Democratic Party. I don’t agree with her on everything. But it’s great she’s here.

Yes, he certainly doesn't agree with her on everything. She's for ordinary working families; he's for Wall Street and, more than anything else, for Chuck Schumer. But he spends his time in the interview gratuitously attacking left-wing bloggers. I'm sure the feeling is mutual. And that brings us to the other corrupt power monger who hands out free passes: bankrupt (both financially and morally) Long Island "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, Nancy Pelosi's unfortunate choice to head the DCCC again (after his stunning losses in 2012).

The DCCC is mathematically incapable of winning back the House as long as Steve Israel heads the committee. If the detestable Schumer now admits he offered Scott Brown a free pass, the slimy Israel should admit how many free passes he gives out-- to his old GOP cronies from the Center Aisle Caucus and in return for the NRCC not supporting Stephen Labate, the very plausible Republican running against Schumer in a toss-up, PVI zero district.

The Democrats have to net 17 seats to win back the House. Yesterday Israel was squeezing House Dems to support his favorite recruit, anti-Choice, antigay, anti-union, anti-environment reactionary Jennifer Garrison. He's so disrespectful of his colleagues that he doesn't tell them she voted against Ohio's version of ENDA-- he even tricked a gay congressman into contributing to her-- or that she's virulently anti-Choice, or that she voted against a bill to raise the minimum wage in Ohio… he just tells them to fork over the money for a candidate running in a deep red district with a PVI of R+8 while he aggressively ignores winnable blue districts and keeps them off the table, either by refusing to recruit candidates or by undercutting grassroots progressives who run without his blessing. Now that's what I call a free pass. And if Pelosi doesn't wake up and realize that the Democrats can't win back the House with Israel as the head of the DCCC, Obama's last two years will be doomed to fail against the shoals of a dysfunctional Republican House utterly incapable of adult governance. Here are 17 Republicans Steve Israel has given free passes to-- at least so far-- and without them, Nancy Pelosi will not be replacing John Boehner. Remember, Obama won each of these districts in 2008 and or 2012:

• MI-06- Fred Upton- R+1
• WA-08- Dave Reichert- R+1
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen- R+2
• PA-06- Jim Gerlach- R+2
• MN-03- Erik Paulsen- R+2
• PA-07- Pat Meehan- R+2
• MN-02- John Kline- R+2
• PA-15- Charlie Dent- R+2
• MI-08- Mike Rogers- R+2
• WA-03- Jaime Hererra Buetler- R+2
• VA-10- Frank Wolf- R+2
• CA-25- Buck McKeon- R+3
• WI-01- Paul Ryan- R+3
• IL-06- Peter Roskam- R+4
• PA-16- Joe Pitts- R+4
• CA-49- Darrell Issa- R+4
• IL-16- Adam Kinzinger- R+4

Any of these candidates would be easier to beat than Bill Johnson, the Republican in the R+8 district Garrison is running against. Democrats in Congress ought to ask Pelosi is she's sleep-walking them back into another two years of minority status.

Yes, reptiles hate bloggers

One last thought-- I called an Elizabeth Warren staffer and asked him if Schumer recruited her. He couldn't stop laughing at first and then uttered one word: "ridiculous!"

Which Republican Will New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen Beat In 2014?

I doubt we'll see a Republican primary fight between Florida's Bob Smith and Massachusetts' Scott Brown for the worthless GOP Senate nomination. Brown seems to have made up his mind to run for president governor (of Massachusetts), leaving the field open for Smith, who, unlike Brown, actually did at one time, live in New Hampshire, having moved there from New Jersey. In fact, he was both a Representative (beating someone named Dudley Dudley) and a Senator from that state. He's 72 now and living in Florida... but wanting to get back on the Beltway ego/gravy train.

Smith was a bit of a crackpot even before the Republican Party institutionalized crackpottery as the official party stance and world view. He tried running for the presidency in 2000 and got angry when no one was interested so he quit the GOP and joined a series of fringe parties. But no one was interested in seeing Bob become president in any of them so he finally withdrew-- and re-joined the GOP. He was defeated in the next New Hampshire primary by John Sununu and then moved to Florida and ran for the Senate there in 2004 and 2010. Still: no one interested.

So now he's back, metaphorically, hoping to run against extremely popular New Hampshire Democrat, Jeanne Shaheen. New Hampshire Republicans have had a hard time recruiting a viable candidate, especially because everyone was so afraid of Scott Brown's gigantic Wall Street warchest when he said he might relocate to New Hampshire to run there. Smith still has a summer home in Tuftonboro, so technically, he's still a Granite Stater, although he's been voting in Florida.

"I am giving it serious consideration," Smith said Friday, but "I have not made a final decision. I have not."

He said he expects to make a decision in the next two to three weeks.

...Smith said the biggest issue for him is the country's huge debt, which both parties helped create. He said he is also concerned about a push for national health care, government spying on private citizens and deficit spending.

"We need leadership to try to head that off," Smith said. "I did have a voting record over 18 years of anti-deficit, anti-debt. I lost that battle, but now we need to turn it around before it is too late."

He said while he has been out of politics for 10 years, he does not want to be a "sunshine patriot" and believes he still has something to contribute to the debate. 

Smith said he has been meeting with people, including a small gathering Friday evening, to hear what they have to say, pro and con.

Several other candidates have said they are interested in the Republican nomination, and one, conservative activist Karen Testerman, has announced she will seek the nomination.

Others exploring a run include state Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, and former state Sen. and gubernatorial candidate Jim Rubens of Etna.



Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., has also been mentioned as a possible candidate, often appearing in the Granite State and refusing to rule it out, although he is also considering a run for governor of Massachusetts. His family owns a summer home in Rye.

Apparently Brown didn't find the reception he was looking for in Iowa and told the Des Moines Register, rather than any Massachusetts (or New Hampshire) news papers that he'll be announcing his campaign for governor (of Massachusetts, presumably) “in a week to 10 days.”

Between stops for bacon-wrapped ribs and a hammy photo with the super bull, Scott Brown didn’t introduce himself to many Iowans.

Brown, a Republican former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, strolled for over two hours today through the Iowa State Fair, an annual 11-day event that’s a magnet for politicians who might want to run for the White House.

Few Iowa fairgoers recognized him as he ate his very first corn dog, drank a couple beers at the Bud Tent, shot a bunch of photos of his wife, Gail Huff, posed in front of the fair’s main attractions (the butter cow, a deep-fried Oreo stand, the Big Boar) and did three local news interviews.

...Brown was voted out of the U.S. Senate nine months ago in Massachusetts, where there are three times as many Democrats as Republicans. He’s now on the buzz list for several possible political offices--  the Senate again, the Massachusetts governor’s office and, as of this weekend, the White House. He told the Des Moines Register on Saturday that he’s scoping out whether Iowa would be favorable to his brand of Republicanism-- fiscally conservative, open minded on social issues, dedicated to bipartisan problem-solving... "I’m here, seeing if there’s any interest.”

GOP In Tumult? Scott Brown And Peter King

So he's an unrepentant Islamophobe... the Dems will take him anyway

Defeated Republican Senator Scott Brown wants to get back into the Senate but polls showed him that Massachusetts voters had had enough of him and he passed on the prospect of running against Ed Markey. But he hasn't passed on running altogether. Maybe he finds lobbying demeaning after being the #1 target of lobbyists affection for so long. So he's been hinting he could run in New Hampshire against Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, the most popular political leader in the state, with a career-high approval rating. "In the most recent Granite State Poll, 59% of New Hampshire adults say they have a favorable opinion of Shaheen, 22% have an unfavorable opinion of her, 9% are neutral and 11% don’t know enough about her to say. Shaheen’s net favorability rating is +37, up from +27% in October. Shaheen’s favorability ratings have improved in a bipartisan fashion since October, she is viewed very favorably among Democrats (net favorability rating of +80%), favorably among Independents (+34%), but unfavorably among Republicans (-9%)." Still, Beltway insider Stu Rothenberg claims Brown is serious about running there, regardless of how boneheaded the idea is.

Former senators who were defeated for re-election can’t simply go to another state-- even if they have property there and have paid taxes there-- and get elected to the Senate, especially if the state is politically competitive.

Former New Hampshire Sen. Robert C. Smith, for example, briefly tried running for Senate in Florida in 2004, two years after he was defeated in the Granite State GOP primary by John E. Sununu. He dropped out after finding that nobody in Florida knew who he was or cared.

For many voters, Brown would appear to be nothing more than “seat shopping” if he were to run in New Hampshire. He’d look like a perfect example of a personally ambitious politician who didn’t care who he represented as long as he had an office on Capitol Hill and the title of U.S. senator.

And coming after Republicans mocked Ashley Judd, who lives in Tennessee but grew up in Kentucky, for publicly mulling a run for the Senate from her home state, those same Republicans would look hypocritical if they backed Brown.

The Brown argument that this would be different because he has had property in the state and paid taxes there is a loser. He represented the people of Massachusetts in the Senate and he’d look like someone without principles-- a carpetbagger who was more interested in his own career than in the country’s future-- if he tried to move on to New Hampshire. After all, if he wants to be in the Senate, why didn’t he run in this year’s special election in Massachusetts?

Never gonna happen. Well, let's put it like this... it's probably less likely than Peter King switching parties and becoming a Democrat-- something we've speculated on before. And there's not much new in the month that's elapsed since that speculation... except this interview he did on Morning Joe a couple days ago. Watch:



He's pretty pissed off at "Republicans in Congress" and singles out Marco Rubio for particular vituperation. "My relationship with Congress," he told Joe Scarborough, "will never be the same again. They made us wait 90 to 100 days to give the most basic human aid that is required. It's absolutely disgraceful. And when I see these Republicans, we slap each other on the back, all the camaraderie, 'hey, we're great friends.' All I know is there were people who were close to dying in my district and no one gave a damn." So how is all that anger manifesting? Peter King is no right-wing whack-job like Steve King, but he's far from a liberal. His career-long ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is 8.34, pretty miserable even for a Republican. This year the score tells a very different story. For the first time in his career, King is voting against the Republican leadership more frequently than any other Republican in the House. His score is 38.89, basically the exact same score Steve Israel and Ron Kind have been steering freshmen into. The 38.89 brigade includes worthless losers like Ann Kuster (D-NH), Dan Mafei (New Dem-NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Raul Ruiz (New Dem-CA) and Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ). Peter King actually has a more progressive voting record this session than DCCC faves Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC- 35.29), Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ-33.33), Bill Owens (New Dem-NY-33.33), the House's worst Democratic freshman, Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-23.53) and, of course, the House's worst over-all fake Democrat, Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT-16.67).

So maybe if Boehner or Cantor do one more thing to alienate him, he'll knock on his buddy Steve Israel's door and work on a jazzy press release.

Ed Markey Has To Fight Off Two Anti-Choice Conservatives-- Stephen Lynch & Scott Brown

John Kerry gets to cap his career off as Secretary of State. Huzzah! I like the sound of "Elizabeth Warren, senior Senator, Commonwealth of Massachusetts," but... but by taking Kerry out of the Senate, Democrats now face the task of holding a seat. Scott Brown, Wall Street's favorite politician, is likely to run again, which means it won't be a cakewalk. The almost universal favorite for the Democratic nomination, with endorsements from the DSCC and from Kerry, is progressive champion Ed Markey, the dean of the Massachusetts delegation, who has a stupendous record in the House, not just as a dependable voter but as a leader on some of the most important issues facing the country, particularly around Climate Change and the environment. His lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial issues score is 94.70, a fraction better than Jerry Nadler and Barbara Lee and a just bit below fellow Massachusetts Reps Jim McGovern and John Tierney.

But Markey isn't the only congressman looking for the promotion to the Senate. Way down at the other end of the political spectrum, conservative Democrat-- and anti-Choice fanatic-- Stephen Lynch would also like to run. His lifetime Progressive Punch crucial vote score is a dismal 78.72. (This session Markey has a 100 rating so far and Lynch has a 33.33 rating, one of the lowest of any Democrat in Congress.) This afternoon, at Iron Worker's Hall in Boston, Lynch announced he would challenge Markey for the nomination (after campaigning at diners in Springfield and Worcester all morning). The primary is set for April 30 and the general election will be June 25. Markey has around $3,000,000 on hand for the challenge, while Lynch has something like $800,000 in his campaign warchest.

As a state legislator Lynch had a 100 percent voting record from Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a group usually associated with Republicans. In Congress, he was one of the 64 Democrats who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment that threatened to derail the healthcare bill. (43 of those Democrats were subsequently defeated for reelection or forced into retirement. One died and, by a quirk, one-- Joe Donnelly-- managed to get into the Senate when his Republican opponent started babbling about legitimate rapes.) Eventually Lynch voted with the GOP against the healthcare bill even after his Stupak-Pitts anti-Choice amendment was added to it.

Over the weekend the Washington Post pointed out that Lynch would definitely give Markey a run for his money-- while draining much of it out of the crucial efforts needed to fight Scott Brown and his Wall Street and Big Oil allies.

“This is an uphill fight for [Lynch] in a Democratic primary,” said Bay State Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. But, she added, Lynch is “clearly going to make Markey earn this.”

Among the questions for Lynch is whether he is capable of building a wide enough base of moderate Democrats and can keep pace with Markey in the money race. How much support Lynch can expect from labor will be another major question.

We don’t yet know the answers to these questions. But one thing we do know is the race to replace Kerry just got a whole lot more interesting.

Blue America has a page devoted to electing progressives to the Senate in 2014. And we've added Ed Markey to it.

Is Scott Brown maybe NOT destined to sneak his way back into the Senate?

One thing I'll freely concede is that Scott is, or leastwise was, mighty purty. But that's not really a credential for the U.S. Senate, is it?

by Ken

In my occasional (these days) reflective moments, I ponder why it bothers me so much that Scott Brown may slither his way back into the Senate as a result of the appointment of Sen. John Kerry to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Howie, you may recall, expressed concern about that, but much greater concern about the ascension of NJ Sen. Bob Menendez to the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. I don't lose sleep over that, but the thought of that damned Scott Brown getting a Chance card passage back to the Senate, a place he never had any business being, drives me nuts.

After all, even I will acknowledge that Scott isn't the worst specimen to grace the Republican side of the Senate aisle in modern times, and in fact is one of the less debased -- not that that's much of a distinction. And I think maybe the key to my distress is that that thing I just wrote about the Senate being "a place he never had any business being." Sure, his Democratic opponent in the January 2010 special election (to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's term) ran a lousy campaign and deserved to lose, but that doesn't mean he deserved to win. How smart did you have to be to see that just about everything about his pose as a rough 'n' tumble man-of-the-folks was a fraud? And he got away with it. People flagrantly getting away with stuff tends to get to me.

So I take heart from a WaPo op-ed piece by Mark Horan, described as "a senior vice president for Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications" who "has worked on numerous Massachusetts political campaigns." Rasky Baerlein, I see, bills itself as "one of the largest independent public relations and public affairs firms in New England," with offices in Boston and Washington, DC.

Is Massachusetts ready for Scott Brown again?

By Mark Horan, Published: December 21

Finally, Republican strategists got what they wanted for Christmas: John Kerry, nominated to be secretary of state. Now the door has swung open for Scott Brown and he can breeze through to give the GOP its first pickup of the 2014 cycle. Or so the theory goes.

Not so fast, everyone.

It’s easy to forget the toxic environment that propelled Brown to his remarkable 2010 victory — and how quickly it has dissipated.

When Brown won the January 2010 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward M. Kennedy, unemployment in Massachusetts was about 9 percent. Fifty-five percent of registered voters thought the commonwealth was on the wrong track. Ninety percent viewed the recession as far from over (even though economists were already seeing a slight uptick), and 70 percent thought the state’s economy would worsen over the next year.

Protest was in the air. Jeering crowds greeted President Obama when he campaigned in Boston for Brown’s opponent.

The environment was electric, and Brown seized on it. In a debate, he jumped on the moderator’s claim that he was running for “Teddy Kennedy’s seat” with a potent retort: “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy seat. It’s not the Democrats’ seat. It’s the people’s seat.”

That line — which Brown adopted for the rest of the campaign — captured the raw anti-establishment sentiment coalescing among Republicans, suburban independents and working-class Democrats, a loose confederation of pocketbook populists ticked off about everything from market crashes to Obamacare to auto bailouts.

But that moment came and went. By the fall of 2010, just nine months after Brown’s victory, Massachusetts voters reelected Gov. Deval Patrick and rejected a tax-cutting ballot by a 14-point margin. This fall, the state gave liberal star Elizabeth Warren an eight-point win over Brown and approved the use of medical marijuana by 26 points. In a sense, Massachusetts regained its blue footing almost as fast as it lost it.

This is not the first time the state has flipped from its traditional blue to red and back to blue. Since Republicans count for less than 12 percent of the state’s registered voters, they need a huge chunk of unaligned voters and maybe a few Democrats to win. With no social issues to fall back on — same-sex marriage has been on the books in Massachusetts since 2004; roughly two-thirds of voters are pro-choice — Massachusetts Republicans seem able to cobble together a majority only in tough economic times.

Thus, Bill Weld became governor when the recession hit in the early 1990s, and Mitt Romney did so after the dot-com bubble burst. But both lost Senate races — Romney to Kennedy in 1994; Weld to Kerry in 1996 — when state unemployment was under 5 percent.

Which brings us back to Brown. The senator struggled throughout 2012 to find his footing in a gentler, more forgiving political environment. The unemployment rate in Massachusetts had dropped to 6 percent as the summer began (and is even lower in Greater Boston), and the mood in the Bay State had turned sunnier: A Suffolk University poll in October found 63 percent of the electorate saying the state was on the right track, a 30-point turnaround from the Brown special election.

If he runs for the seat Kerry is poised to vacate, Brown is likely to face the same problem: how to define himself in a time of relative economic stability and liberal resurgence, punctuated by President Obama’s 23-point win in Massachusetts. By the time Brown lost to Warren last month, his support had dropped significantly among independent women and Democrats.

To be sure, Brown has assets. A poll published this week suggested he is enjoying a sort of post-defeat honeymoon: He is viewed favorably by 58 percent of the electorate. In head-to-head match-ups, he led several congressmen (all of whom lack his statewide recognition) by 17 points or more. Before he leaves the Senate, he may have a chance to raise taxes on the rich, which would enhance his reach-across-the-aisle persona.

But short of the country hurtling over the fiscal cliff and into a recession, Brown won’t have the economic turmoil that fueled his first victory and is often key to Republican success in Massachusetts. As he knows from living in the Bay State all his life, ferocious storms yield an angry, almost black surf. But when the storm goes out to sea, the ocean reverts to its natural color: blue. For the moment, Massachusetts is blue again.

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Swell Aristocrat John Kerry Wants A Nice Capper For A Distinguished Career

Rah!

Kerry isn't one of the bad guys. For a multimillionaire he's pretty good. I seem to recall he's the richest man in the Senate. And he's done a decent-enough job in the Senate-- not the best, but certainly not the worst among the Democrats. When he ran his disjointed abortive campaign for president, the GOP claimed he was "the most liberal" man to ever run for president and the "most liberal" man in the Senate. But they claim that about every Democrat who runs. They even said it about Obama; didn't that turn out pretty ironic! According to ProgressivePunch's lifetime crucial vote score, Kerry has an 87.41, making him the 22nd most progressive. He's no Jeff Merkley (93.68) or Barbara Boxer (94.54) or Bernie Sanders (95.32) or Al Franken (96.28)... but on the other hand, he's a league above the real garbage like Ben Nelson (45.39), Joe Manchin (62.79), Max Baucus (62.98), Mary Landrieu (64.92) and Mark Pryor (66.56), Democrats who pretty consistently vote with the GOP against the interests of working families and in favor of the interests of the wealthiest two percent.

And now he wants to leave the Senate and crown his career with a grand title, Secretary of State. And he'd be as good as any other monkey a president as limited in scope as Obama would ever nominate for the job. Obama's not ever going outside the bounds of Beltway consensus-- which is, when all is said and done, a conservative consensus-- to find any cabinet members. We'll have a Wall Street hack as Treasury Secretary and an imperialist as Secretary of State-- if not John Kerry, then some of more-of-the-same kind of guy, better than John Bolton, of course... but no Dennis Kucinich or Howard Zinn. But this selection isn't about American policy... it's about John Kerry and his ego. Fuck John Kerry's ego!

As I've mentioned before, if Kerry leaves two things happen: a crazy anti-Cuba zealot, Bob Menendez, takes over as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee-- one of the least competent senators to sit as head of that committee-- and Obama, following the demands of the GOP, hands the Massachusetts Senate seat over to the Republicans. A new poll finds that 58% of Massachusetts voters have a favorable view of defeated Republican Senator Scott Brown (currently playing up to the state's voters by backing curbs on assault weapons, unlike his party, which will never allow an effective ban to pass) and only 28% view him unfavorably. And in head-to-head match-ups, Brown seriously outpolls the 3 congressmen most likely to get the Democratic nomination, liberals Ed Markey and Mike Capuano and virulently anti-Choice ConservaDem Stephen Lynch.



Democrats are scrambling for names to oppose Brown now since Obama isn't one do put what's good for working families above what's good for any aristocrat, let alone one of his palsy-walsy aristocratic buddies. Prediction-- although it's one I've made before-- Obama goes down in history not just as the first African-American president and not just as another in a long line of mediocre presidents since Eisenhower, but as the Democrat who wrecked his party's brand and made the Democrats as anathema to American voters as Republicans already are. How sad will it be watching how many things Senator Brown screws up as a Republican senator in a blue seat while Kerry gets the chance to live out his dream of being a Foreign Minister!